Before you take a headcount freeze to the board, write it as a set of rules and test them against the cases that will arrive in the first month. Say which roles are frozen, how exceptions and backfills are approved, how promotions and contractors are handled, what ends the freeze, and what the board will see at each meeting while it runs. Paste the freeze proposal, open roles with planned start dates, attrition by team, outstanding offers, contractor spend, and the savings estimate into one request. Instruct Pingpong to find gaps in the rules, recompute the savings, and flag teams that will run short first. Review your written answers in a second round.
This page is for executives and directors setting a hiring freeze the board will approve or track. Executive starting points live under Pingpong for executives.
Write the freeze as rules
- Scope: whether the freeze covers new roles only, or backfills too.
- Exceptions: who approves them, how often, and where each one is logged.
- Backfills: which roles are refilled when someone leaves, and which are not.
- Promotions and transfers: whether they continue within existing headcount.
- Contractors: what stops managers from replacing frozen roles with contracts.
- End trigger: the result or date that lifts the freeze, stated in numbers.
Test the rules against four cases
A senior engineer on a critical system resigns. A candidate has a signed offer starting in three weeks. A manager wants to convert a contractor to an employee. A team misses a customer commitment because it is short two people. If the rules do not settle each case, managers will, each in their own way.
A worked example
This example is illustrative and does not describe a customer. A 380-person commerce software company has missed its bookings plan for two quarters. The chief executive plans to tell the board that all new hiring is frozen until further notice, with exceptions approved by the chief executive. The proposal estimates $6 million in annual savings from 40 open roles.
The chief financial officer pastes the proposal, open roles with start dates and costs, attrition by team, outstanding offers, contractor spend, and the support and on-call rosters.
A useful pass finds that "all new hiring" does not say whether backfills count. Attrition has run at about 14% a year, roughly four or five departures a month. If backfills stop, the support team and the on-call rotation fall below their minimum staffing within a quarter. Six candidates have signed offers. Nothing addresses contractors, though contractor spend jumped during a past hiring pause. The proposal does not say whether a promotion that creates a new manager role counts as new headcount. Every exception goes to the chief executive alone, with no log. "Until further notice" gives the board no way to judge when the freeze should end. The savings estimate assumes every open role would have started in the first month of the year. Using the planned start dates, the figure falls to about $3.8 million.
The revised proposal freezes net new roles. Backfills continue for support, on-call, and revenue-carrying roles with the chief operating officer's approval, and other backfills wait. The six signed offers are honored, with HR and counsel confirming the approach. Promotions continue within existing headcount, with no new management layers. New contracts longer than 90 days or above $50,000 need the chief financial officer's approval, and contractor spend is reported monthly. The chief executive, chief financial officer, and chief operating officer review exceptions weekly, log each with its cost and reason, and approve no more than eight a quarter. The freeze lifts after two consecutive months of bookings at or above 95% of plan, or when the board approves a revised plan.
At each meeting while the freeze runs, the board sees the revised savings, the exception log, attrition by team, contractor spend against the prior quarter, and progress toward the end trigger. Managers get a short note on what is frozen and how to request an exception.
If the freeze is one lever in a larger spending reduction, see work backward from the runway you need before you cut burn.
A request you can copy
Below are our headcount freeze proposal, open roles with planned start dates and costs, attrition by team, outstanding offers, contractor spend, and the savings estimate. Check that the rules cover scope, exceptions, backfills, promotions, contractors, and an end trigger in numbers. Test them against a critical resignation, a signed offer, a contractor conversion, and a missed customer commitment. Recompute savings using planned start dates. Flag the teams that run short first and what the board should see at each meeting. Stop there so we can answer in writing, then review our answers.
How Pingpong runs the review
The web review app sends your request through several models in order. Each later model receives the original request and every earlier answer, with instructions to assess the work so far. For the steps inside the app, see running your first review.
What a model can't review
A model does not know your teams' morale or which people are thinking of leaving. HR and counsel own commitments to candidates and employees, and you and the board own the decision.
When the freeze goes to the board, see war-game a decision before the board meeting. More guides live under work decisions before you commit.