Introducing Advanced Approval Workflows

Today, ChartHop is announcing a new approval workflows feature. With this launch, customers can now add custom approval steps to the end of any workforce planning process.

Since ChartHop’s founding, we heard from our customers that collaboration between People Ops, Talent, Finance and Management is essential to any planning process. That’s why ChartHop’s flexible Scenarios are one of our customer’s favorite features.

Approval workflows are the perfect partner to Scenarios. They ensure that all of the right people sign off on backfilling a role or making any org change, without the chaos of an “RE:RE:RE: Approve ASAP please” email chain.

Oh and the best part is that, like all of ChartHop, they are designed to be configurable and flexible. So regardless of how unique your org structure is, they’ll work for you.

Pivotal Moments

Changes to your organization are pivotal movements. And proposals for changes can sometimes lead to more questions than answers. Seemingly simple decisions, like whether to backfill for an employee who just unexpectedly gave notice, turn into healthy discussions, such as:

• “Should we backfill at the same level or a different one?”
• “Could we save this budget? Can the team get by and redistribute responsibilities?”
• “Is this job description up to date?”
• “How soon do we need this role filled?”
• “Are there any opportunities to fill this role internally?”

These decisions have major impacts downstream on Finance’s forecasts, Recruiting’s hiring plans, and, of course, the team itself.

Alignment & Empowerment Through Approvals

The starting point for any workforce plans should always be your team and leadership. With ChartHop’s flexible Scenarios, your leaders pull in their leadership team for immediate collaboration to put their best plan forward.

They then work with the People and Finance teams to help them refine the plan using all the relevant information and targeted comment.

Lastly, the plan is submitted for its final stage of approval from leadership. And voila! Management, People, Finance, and Talent & Leadership have aligned and signed off on the plan, and you’re ready to start building your team.

Design Your Unique Approval Process

How you design an approval process for workforce plans changes depends on how your organization operates.

With ChartHop’s Approval Workflow Builder, you can create an approval process that fits the level of sophistication of your organization.

• For small organizations, it can be simple: VP of People → CFO → CEO
• For larger organizations, it can be more complex: If the change involves the Engineering Department then add Mirin, their HRBP, as an approver.

For the more complex cases, you’ll want to build in logic to determine the right set of approvers based on department, location, team or group.

Easily Track and Audit Approvals

Once approval requests are submitted, admins can clearly see the status of every approval and even make mid-approval swaps or changes as needed.

After an approval is complete, it’s easy to audit and see who approved a given request, whether it’s a new role that was opened or a reorganization of the team. No more tracking down emails to see who approved what role!

Planning Done Right

Org planning involves both cyclical tasks and one off changes, but regardless of your process, you need a Headcount Planning system that supports robust approval workflows.

Advanced Approval Workflows is part of ChartHop’s Extended Configurability module.