Headcount Business Case: A Word Template That Now Routes Itself
- Status
- 254 tests · built August–September 2026 · live, internal
- Stack
- Next.jsSlack Workflow Builder
Landing page — start a request or see everything still waiting on a decision.
01 — The problem
The headcount process lived in a Word template that got emailed around. Nobody could tell you who had to sign off, in what order, or where a request had been sitting for three weeks — every approval turned into somebody chasing somebody.
02 — What it does
A hiring manager fills out a business case once — role, level, justification — and it routes through four fixed reviews: the functional leader, then Talent Planning, then Finance, then Recruiting. Each reviewer gets a Slack message with approve/decline links. A single dashboard lists every open request sorted by longest wait, with a one-click reminder per stage.
03 — Design & technical approach
The manager never sets a salary; Talent Planning sets the pay range as part of approving, which flips how the range used to get decided by whoever typed into the Word template first. The reminder button is rate-limited per stage since reminding is the one repeatable action — a lesson learned after an earlier version let a reminder fire fifty times to the same executive before the limit existed. Every action the app takes, including suppressed or failed messages, is logged for audit.
04 — Outcome & impact
A request that used to sit in an inbox for three weeks now shows exactly who it's waiting on and for how long. A single page lists everything still waiting, longest wait first, with a rate-limited reminder button per stage — reminding is the one action safe to repeat, which is also exactly the kind of thing that once sent an executive fifty test messages before the rate limit existed. Every action the app has taken is logged, including messages it suppressed or failed to send.
Every screen, explained
A closer look at each part of the app, in the order you'd actually move through it.