Definition
One FTE is one person working a full contracted week. Two agents each working half a week are one FTE. Expressing requirements in FTE rather than headcount lets you compare and add capacity across sites with different contract lengths and shift patterns.
Capacity planning works in FTE: required FTE = workload hours ÷ (gross hours per FTE × (1 − shrinkage) × target occupancy). Headcount is then derived from FTE using your actual contract mix.
FTE and headcount are not interchangeable. A site with many part-time contracts will always have more heads than FTE, which matters for seat planning, licences and training room capacity.
Why it matters
- FTE is the currency of budgets and business cases, so it is the number finance will challenge.
- Mixing FTE and headcount in a single plan is a common source of silent under-recruitment.
- Converting FTE to headcount early exposes practical constraints such as seats, kit and trainer availability.
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