Headcount planning and management
Budgeting and forecasting

How Helion Energy scaled 2.5x by giving Finance and Talent complete hiring clarity with TeamOhana

2.5x
headcount growth in two years
<7 days
— headcount request to req approval
Overview
Ali Yousaf, Director of People Operations and Talent at Helion Energy, joined the company in August 2023 with an immediate mandate: bring order to a headcount process that had none. Helion is building the world's first commercial fusion power plant — a facility in eastern Washington contracted to deliver clean electricity to Microsoft — and was growing fast enough that its existing tools couldn't keep up. Finance and Talent were each working from their own incomplete picture, with no shared system and no reliable way to know which headcount was real. Within three weeks of starting, Ali had identified TeamOhana as the solution. Within six weeks of signing, Helion was live.
Challenges
No shared headcount record between Finance and Talent
Headcount tracked in Smartsheets with approvals routed by email
Recruiters unclear on what was approved, live, or priority
Finance learning about open roles by word of mouth
01
The challenge
02
Our solution
03
Key workflows
04
Impact and results

When Ali joined Helion in August 2023, the company was 185 employees and scaling hard across hardware, science, manufacturing, and corporate functions. The headcount process he inherited was held together by Smartsheets and email chains, causing recruiting operations and Finance teams to spend 15-20% of their team trying to answer one question: what headcount is actually real?

The problem wasn't abstract. One of the first things Ali encountered was a director-level role posted on Helion's website with no confirmed headcount behind it. Candidates were being considered for a position that hadn't been approved.

"We're considering candidates for a role that we don't even have headcount for." —Ali Yousaf, Director of People Operations and Talent, Helion Energy

Recruiters had no reliable source of truth. They didn't know which roles were approved, which were a priority, or where to focus. One person was spending a significant portion of every week chasing approvals and email threads. Finance had no dedicated place to track open roles at all. If they knew what was open, it was because someone had told them.

Ali knew the fix couldn't be a talent-only solution. A tool that worked for recruiters but left Finance out would never get leadership buy-in, especially in a 2023 market skeptical of talent-specific investment. What he needed was a system both teams could trust and own together.

"My goal was: this cannot be a talent-only solution and it cannot be a finance-only solution." —Ali Yousaf, Director of People Operations and Talent, Helion Energy

Our solution

TeamOhana gave Helion what Smartsheets and email chains couldn't: a single place where Finance and Talent could plan, approve, and track headcount together. Both teams were involved in the setup from day one, and the entire process — from signed contract to live — took less than six weeks. 

What made adoption fast was that TeamOhana reduced process rather than adding it. Engineering and technical leaders, typically skeptical of new tooling, had little pushback because the system made their work simpler.

"We were able to replace Smartsheets and email approvals right away from day one. The entire thing was built around enablement and helping our teams move faster — not adding process that slowed us down." —Ali Yousaf, Director of People Operations and Talent, Helion Energy

The result was a system that served every team that touches headcount at Helion:

  • Recruiters know exactly which roles are approved, live, and priority, with a clear record of when headcount was approved and what the expectations are for filling it.
  • Finance gets accurate headcount and compensation data feeding directly into budget forecasting and annual planning, without manual reconciliation.
  • Hiring managers see the status of their open roles without asking anyone, and submit headcount requests through a consistent, trackable workflow.

Leadership has full visibility into what every team is hiring for, at what level, and at what target compensation with a configurable approval chain that routes the right requests to the right people.

Key workflows

Headcount request and approval

Previously, a headcount request at Helion meant drafting an email, routing it through a chain of approvers, and hoping nothing got lost. With TeamOhana, requests move through a configured workflow — from the submitting team through Finance and up to the CEO for net new headcount — with full context attached and every decision on the record. 

Helion customized approval routing by request type: technical backfills move through without a lengthy chain, net new headcount requires CEO sign-off, and internal transfers stay at the hiring manager level. The result is a process that matches how Helion actually makes decisions rather than forcing the company to adapt to a one-size-fits-all system.

Real-time headcount visibility

When a question comes up about a role (e.g. what level was approved, why that level was chosen, what the comment history was), the answer used to require tracking down emails and Slack threads. Now it lives in TeamOhana, accessible to anyone who needs it.

"Just this morning I was in a thread with a recruiter on a role we have right now. We had some questions, went back and checked in TeamOhana — what was the level we aligned on, what was the comment history. What might've been something that takes a couple of days was literally a seven-minute conversation during breakfast." —Ali Yousaf, Director of People Operations and Talent, Helion Energy

Annual and ongoing headcount planning

Helion has run two consecutive annual planning cycles in TeamOhana. Leadership submits plans by team, Finance tracks budget impact in real time, and Ali runs monthly check-ins with leaders to review whether approved plans still reflect current priorities. 

When something shifts, the record of what changed is preserved. During one prioritization exercise, Ali pulled up TeamOhana's history to confirm a role had been marked lower-priority months earlier, explaining exactly why the recruiting team hadn't pushed harder on it.

Hiring manager accountability

Hiring managers at Helion see the status of their open roles without having to ask anyone. Ali uses the same data to hold his recruiting team accountable, tracking time from "ready to hire" to open role, and monitoring how quickly candidates move through the pipeline.

"We approved this headcount on this date, it was ready to hire. I can go back to my talent team and hold them accountable to how long it took us from the time the role was ready until we opened it." —Ali Yousaf, Director of People Operations and Talent, Helion Energy

Impact & results

From spreadsheets to a plan everyone can execute against

With TeamOhana, Helion shifted from a process held together by Smartsheets and email threads to one where Finance and Talent operate from a single source of truth. The new system got them through 2.5x headcount growth, two annual planning cycles, and more than 300 offers extended. And it’s set up to continue scaling with Helion’s growth.

Headcount verification dropped to zero

The bandwidth that Finance and Talent had been spending on reconciliation came back immediately and completely. Since Helion signed with TeamOhana in October 2023, the "is this headcount real" conversation has not happened once. Over 300 offers have been extended without a single question about whether the underlying headcount was approved. That track record has held through the company's most aggressive period of growth.

Finance shifted from reconciliation to forecasting

With accurate headcount data flowing in real time, Finance stopped guessing at labor costs and started using TeamOhana as the foundation for budget planning. The conversations between Finance and Talent changed too. Less time spent figuring out what's open, more time spent on strategic questions about levels, timing, and cost impact. That shift is reflected in how Helion plans: two consecutive annual cycles now run entirely through TeamOhana, with Finance tracking headcount costs in real time as plans are built.

Talent became a strategic partner

With no time spent on headcount verification, Ali's team focuses on the work that actually moves hiring forward. Recruiters know what to work on and why. Hiring managers are accountable to a documented plan. And Ali can have strategic conversations with leadership about prioritization and timing rather than spending his days chasing down approvals.

  • Helion scaled from 185 to 475 employees (and is projecting to more than double again) without adding headcount operations staff to manage manual tracking
  • The talent team's role in annual planning expanded, with structured monthly Finance-Talent check-ins built into the 2026 operating cadence
  • Ali frames the ROI simply: take 20% of the salary of anyone doing manual headcount work. That's what the spreadsheet process costs. TeamOhana costs less.

"If you're the head of talent and you only get to pick one tool —your ATS, your HRIS, whatever — for me the answer is always TeamOhana. Because with that, at least I have clarity on what I'm working on. Everything else, I can make it work." —Ali Yousaf, Director of People Operations and Talent, Helion Energy

2.5x
headcount growth in two years
<7 days
— headcount request to req approval

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