Fernhill

People Ops · Internal recap · Shared with everyone who was in the room

Q4 planning offsite – recap

What fourteen of us put on the wall on Thursday afternoon, what we decided, what we left open on purpose, and who is doing what before we meet again in October.

Date
Thursday 18 September 2026
Time
14:00 – 17:00, three hours
Where
Room Birch, second floor
Who
14 people, every team
Facilitator
Priya, People Ops
Notes
Sam, Chief of Staff

Fourteen people, three hours, one wall. We wrote 22 notes, clustered them into four themes and spent 42 dots. We left with five decisions, five open questions and ten actions. Pricing took a third of the dots: the partner tier goes, and we test per-employee pricing in November rather than waiting for January. Next check-in is Thursday 16 October.

Why we met

Q4 is the last quarter before the January price change, and three teams were carrying bets that depended on each other. Pricing wanted to go from three plans to two. Support wanted headcount in place before the renewal rush, not during it. Product had four integrations in progress and none finished. Each of those had been discussed in one-to-ones for a month without moving.

Jonas asked for one room and one afternoon instead of another round of one-to-ones. The rule for the session: write before you talk, vote before you argue, and every decision leaves the room with a name on it.

Why we are here The wall: write, then cluster Dot vote Break Decisions, one theme at a time Actions, parking lot, close 14:00 14:20 15:00 15:10 15:25 15:40 16:00 16:35 17:00
Figure 1 · How the three hours went. Yellow is time on the wall, white is time on decisions. We ran five minutes over on decisions and took it from the close.

The wall

Ten minutes of silent writing, one thought per note. Priya clustered while we talked, and duplicates were stacked. Twenty-two notes survived. Everyone then had three dots to place. Notes are quoted as written; the dots are the votes they received.

  • Pricing
  • Support
  • Product
  • Go-to-market

Pricing

6 notes · 14 dots

  • partner tier = 3 customers. 40% of billing tickets

    6 votes

  • per employee, not per admin seat

    4 votes

  • nobody can say what Plus includes. not even us

    2 votes

  • test in Nov. January is renewal season

    2 votes

  • annual discount too deep? 15% → 10%?

    no votes

  • grandfather everyone 12 months. no surprises

    no votes

Support

5 notes · 9 dots

  • first reply 9h on Mondays. 2h rest of the week

    4 votes

  • 2 people, 3 time zones

    3 votes

  • payroll questions: not ours, still land with us

    2 votes

  • macros are from 2024. plan names wrong

    no votes

  • hire before the January rush, not during it

    no votes

Product

6 notes · 12 dots

  • review cycles = 60% of feature asks

    5 votes

  • 4 integrations started, 0 finished

    4 votes

  • org chart import breaks above 2k people

    3 votes

  • mobile app or better mobile web?

    no votes

  • managers never open the dashboard. why?

    no votes

  • one thing finished > three things started

    no votes

Go-to-market

5 notes · 7 dots

  • 3 launches planned. 1 team of 2

    4 votes

  • sales needs a pricing page they can send

    2 votes

  • webinar signups up, attendance flat

    1 vote

  • October conference: booth, or tickets only?

    no votes

  • case study with the 800-seat account

    no votes

Reading the dots: pricing took 14 of 42, product 12, support 9, go-to-market 7. Eight notes got no dots at all, and most of those went straight to the parking lot. The go-to-market cluster collapsed into a single decision once the launch count was on the table. The colours carry through the rest of this document: each decision and action shows the theme it came from.

Decisions

  1. Drop the partner tier

    Owner
    Ana
    From
    Pricing

    Three customers are on it and they generate 40% of billing tickets. All three move to Team with a twelve-month price hold, so nobody pays more before September 2027. This takes the pricing page from three plans to two before the November test, which is the only way the test reads cleanly.

  2. Price test in November

    Owner
    Leo
    From
    Pricing

    Per-employee pricing goes to new signups only, at two price points, for four weeks from 3 November. The result lands before the January change is locked. We are not testing in January because that is renewal season and the numbers would be unreadable.

  3. Hire two in support

    Owner
    Mo
    From
    Support

    First reply is nine hours on Mondays with two people covering three time zones. One hire sits in the earlier time zone, one is a generalist. Both are in seat by 1 December, so they are trained before the January rush rather than during it. Yuki confirmed the budget in the room.

  4. Freeze new integrations until January

    Owner
    Tomás
    From
    Product

    Four integrations in progress, none finished. We finish the two payroll connectors and stop the other two, and we tell the customers who asked for them. The org chart import fix, which breaks above 2,000 people, moves ahead of everything else on the roadmap.

  5. One launch in Q4, on 17 November

    Owner
    Ines
    From
    Go-to-market

    Three launches were planned for a marketing team of two. Review cycles and the payroll connectors ship together as one release on 17 November, with the webinar and the sales pricing page attached to that date. Everything else goes out quietly in the changelog.

Open questions

  1. Does the November price test include existing customers who upgrade during the test, or new signups only?

    Leo and Yuki settle it in the test plan, by 10 October.

  2. Mobile app, or better mobile web? We ran out of time on this one.

    Wren brings two costed options to the 16 October check-in.

  3. Who owns the pricing page once the partner tier is gone: marketing or sales?

    Ines and Kai, by 7 October. Sales needs a page it can send before the test starts.

  4. Do the two support hires report to Mo, or to the regional leads?

    Mo and Priya decide before any offer goes out.

  5. What do we tell the three partner-tier customers, and who calls them?

    Ana and Dara, before 2 October, so the calls land ahead of the written sunset note.

Action items

Ten actions from the room. Status as of Wednesday 24 September 2026.
Action Owner Due Status
Confirm the twelve-month price hold for partner-tier accounts with FinanceYuki30 SepDone
Open the two support rolesPriya25 SepDone
Write the sunset note for the three partner-tier accountsAna2 OctIn progress
Stop the two non-payroll integrations and tell the customers who askedTomás3 OctIn progress
Cut the launch plan to one date and share it with salesInes7 OctNot started
Draft the price test plan: price points, sample, success measureLeo10 OctIn progress
Bring two costed mobile options to the check-inWren16 OctNot started
Shortlist support candidates in the earlier time zoneMo17 OctNot started
Refresh the support macros with the new plan namesDara24 OctBlocked, needs plan names
Fix org chart import above 2,000 peopleTomás31 OctNot started

The colour mark is the wall theme the action came from. Owners update their own row; Sam checks the table on Fridays.

Parking lot

Things we chose not to decide. Each has a reason and a date it comes back.

Annual discount depth
Stays at 15% until the price test reads out. The 10% suggestion returns in December with the test results, not before.
Renaming Plus
Not until the test settles what the two plans are. The name follows the plan, not the other way round.
October conference
We go with tickets, no booth. Bea and Kai attend. The booth question comes back for the spring event.
Manager dashboard
Nobody in the room could say why managers do not open it. Oskar pulls opens by role in October; any redesign waits for Q1.
Case study with the 800-seat account
Wanted, not yet. It waits until the review-cycle release has shipped so there is something new to show.