NWTS DecisionIQ™ · The executive workforce decision engine
Know the cost of your next workforce decision before you make it.
Hire, reskill, outsource, automate or redesign? DecisionIQ puts every option side by side, with total cost, break-even month and cash exposure, from numbers you already have. Every calculation is shown, and nothing needs integrating.
Built by Nikita R. Steals, CTAS, PMP, SPHR, who made these calls as a talent executive at Capital One, Amazon Web Services and Conduent.
Try it: a team that's short on capacity
Live, your numbersLoading the model…
Assumptions in this example
Work grows 8% a year. Each hire costs 20% of salary to recruit, takes 2 months to fill and 3 to ramp up. Reskilling covers 30% of the team at $5,000 each for a 15% productivity gain. Outsourcing costs 115% of a loaded salary plus 8% oversight. Automation and redesign costs scale with team size. In DecisionIQ you set every one of these yourself.
One firm, four ways to work with NWTS.
NWTS DecisionIQ™
Cost every workforce option before you decide.
For leadersExecutive Academy™
Self-paced courses with written faculty feedback.
For individualsCareerIQ™
A private, executive-level career adviser.
For critical hiresSearch & RPO
Retained search and RPO through our TriSearch partnership.
Hiring now? Work with NWTS and TriSearch
Retained search, volume hiring and RPO, through the NWTS partnership with TriSearch.
Work with NWTS on any hire, at any level, in any industry, delivered through our strategic partnership with TriSearch, a nationally ranked recruiting firm.
TriSearch recognitiontrisearch.com
- America’s Best Professional Recruiting FirmsForbes
- Top Nationwide Recruitment FirmHunt Scanlon
- Top 40 Healthcare Search FirmHunt Scanlon
- Top 40 Life Sciences Search FirmHunt Scanlon
- Top 70 HR and Diversity Search FirmsHunt Scanlon
- Power65 Diversity and Inclusion ProviderHunt Scanlon
- Top 10 RPO ProviderHR Tech Outlook, 2021
- MemberRecruitment Process Outsourcing Association
- Accredited BusinessBetter Business Bureau
Recognition as listed by TriSearch.
AI-assisted sourcing · 14 industry practice groups · United States, Canada and Europe
Why now
Most leadership teams decide one of their largest costs without a model.
Finance models every capital purchase to the dollar. Headcount usually gets a spreadsheet built once a year. Then AI changes which work needs people at all, and the spreadsheet can't answer the question the board is asking.
of CHROs say AI’s expected effects are built into enterprise-wide workforce and financial planning.
The Conference Board, CHRO Confidence Index Q3 2026, via HR Divefeel very prepared to lead their organization through AI-driven change over the next two years.
The Conference Board, Q3 2026, via HR Diveof the skills used on the job today are expected to change by 2030.
World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025is what each $1.00 of salary costs once benefits are added: benefits are 30% of private-sector compensation.
BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026The gap we fill
Too big for a spreadsheet. Too small for a six-figure platform. Too urgent for a consulting project.
Leadership teams in companies of 50 to 1,000 people make workforce decisions worth millions with three bad options. DecisionIQ is the fourth: the decision, costed and explained, this week, at a published price.
| Spreadsheet | Enterprise workforce platform | Consulting engagement | NWTS DecisionIQ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Whoever built it | Organizations of 1,000+ with an analytics team | A single scoped question | Leadership teams of 50–1,000-person companies |
| Price | Free, plus your time | Quote-only; implementation fees | Scoped per engagement | $149 or $499 a month, published |
| Time to first answer | Days, if anyone owns it | Months of implementation | Weeks | One sitting |
| Compares hire, reskill, outsource, automate, redesign | Rarely | Varies by module | Yes, once | Yes, every time, side by side |
| Shows its math | If you can read the formulas | Often a black box | In the deck | Every number, in plain English |
| Keeps pace with the market | No | Through your data team | Until the engagement ends | Weekly Decision Signal, monthly recalculation |
Enterprise platform characteristics from published market comparisons (Rework, 2026).
What we cover
We track the workforce architecture of the market, so your plan keeps up with it.
Industries shift, markets reprice talent, budgets move, AI rewrites jobs. We follow the elements that move them and turn each into a decision you can make.
Workforce planning and transformation
Headcount tied to revenue, organization design, and the build, buy, borrow or automate call for every function.
Performance
Fair, structured systems that lift results: clear expectations, consistent evaluation, accountable managers.
Development
Reskilling, leadership benches and internal mobility, costed against hiring from outside.
Inclusion and belonging
Retention, engagement and fair access to opportunity, managed as part of the same system.
What it answers
The six decisions DecisionIQ costs out.
Each one is modeled month by month against holding steady, so you see what the decision costs, what it saves, and when it pays back.
Hire
Recruiting cost, time to fill and ramp-up, set against the cost of leaving roles open.
Reskill
Training cost and time away from work, against the capacity the new skills add.
Outsource
Vendor rates, transition cost and oversight, compared with building the team yourself.
Automate
Build and run costs, adoption speed, and the hours of capacity it actually frees.
Redesign
One-time restructuring cost and disruption, against efficiency from better spans and layers.
Hold steady
The baseline: what the gap between the work and the people costs if nothing changes.
How it works
From your numbers to a board-ready brief.
No implementation project and no data integration. Built so your first brief can be finished in a single sitting.
Diagnose
Answer a short executive diagnostic: headcount, labor cost, growth target, hiring plan and capability gaps. See your readiness score, risk indicators and labor-cost exposure, each with the rule that produced it.
Model
Compare the six options for the gap you found. Change any assumption, such as salary, ramp-up time or vendor rate, and the comparison updates instantly.
Decide
Export an executive decision brief with objectives, findings, options, risks, assumptions and a roadmap. Rerun it next quarter to track what changed.
Built by an operator
The judgment behind the model comes from making these calls at enterprise scale.
Nikita R. Steals, CTAS, PMP, SPHR
Managing Partner, Northwest Talent Solutions
15+ years leading talent and workforce transformation at Capital One, Amazon Web Services and Conduent, across the public sector and private industry. Founder of Ascension12, acquired.
Leadership & recognitionPricing
Two plans. Public prices. No implementation fee.
Enterprise workforce platforms are priced by quote and built for 1,000+ employees. DecisionIQ is built for the leadership team that needs the answer this quarter.
DecisionIQ plans
Executive Intelligence
For one leader: a CEO, CFO, COO, CHRO, owner or independent advisor.
Or $1,490 a year.
1 seat10 saved scenarios12-month horizon
- Executive workforce diagnostic with every finding explained
- Scenario engine: hire, reskill, outsource, automate, redesign, hold
- AI transformation readiness and roadmap
- 12-month scenarios, 10 saved scenarios, 1 company
- Executive decision briefs as PDF
- Dashboard with history, so you can rerun as assumptions change
- The Decision Signal every Monday: what changed, and the assumption to update
- Your monthly Decision Update: your scenarios recalculated on the latest BLS data
- Ask NWTS: questions answered in the app within one business day
Enterprise DecisionIQ
For a leadership team in a company of 50 to 1,000 people: HR, finance and operations working from one model.
Or $4,990 a year.
5 seatsUnlimited scenariosUp to 36-month horizon
- Everything in Executive Intelligence
- 5 team seats with a shared dashboard
- 10 projects (business units, functions or plans) and unlimited scenarios
- 12-, 24- and 36-month scenarios
- Organizational transformation diagnostics across functions
- Board-ready briefs comparing every option
- Monthly Decision Update across every project
Prices in US dollars, plus any applicable tax. Cancel any time from your billing page; your plan runs to the end of the period you paid for. Consulting time, retained search and RPO are not included in either plan.
Enterprise solutions
When the answer is a search or a recruiting program, we run it.
DecisionIQ is the software. For the people work it points to, we deliver retained, volume and RPO search with our strategic partner TriSearch, a nationally ranked recruiting firm with AI-assisted sourcing and practice groups across 14 industries, at every level from individual contributor to C-suite.
Retained executive search
C-suite, VP and director search through the NWTS and TriSearch partnership, with full market mapping and direct approach to passive leaders.
Recruitment process outsourcing
Recruiting capacity that scales with your hiring plan, delivered with TriSearch and reported on time-to-fill, quality of hire and pipeline health.
Workforce advisory
Senior counsel on retainer for planning and transformation, plus 90-minute leadership sessions for a single decision.
In their words
What clients and colleagues say about working with Nikita.
“We instructed Nikita and her firm to assist with filling two key roles in our US office. Since we were unfamiliar with the US market, we required a company that was knowledgeable and had access to a strong talent pool. Within four weeks, both positions were filled. Communication is one area that Nikita and her firm excel at. A pleasure to work with — we will be instructing the firm further in the future.”
“Nikita and I worked together during the build out of a new entity in EMEA for AWS. She was brought in to manage a highly ambiguous and unstructured global recruitment business. Nikita brought much managerial stability, direction and data use to the business reporting, and was able to use this data to demonstrate why decisions needed to be made. It was a pleasure working with Nikita, I highly recommend her ability to manage large complex businesses and deliver results.”
What is NWTS DecisionIQ?
NWTS DecisionIQ™ is a subscription tool that shows executives what a workforce decision will cost before they make it. You enter your own numbers, and it compares hiring, reskilling, outsourcing, automating, redesigning and holding steady side by side: total cost, break-even month and peak cash exposure, with every calculation shown.
Who is it for?
CEOs, CFOs, COOs and CHROs of companies with roughly 50 to 1,000 employees, and leadership teams in mid-market firms, who need to make workforce decisions without a dedicated workforce-planning team or a six-figure analytics platform.
Do I need to connect my HR system?
No. You enter a handful of numbers you already know: headcount, salaries, revenue, growth target and hiring plan. Nothing is integrated, so you can start in one sitting.
Does it use AI to make up numbers?
No. Every financial result comes from published formulas applied to your inputs. You can see and edit every assumption, and each result shows how it was calculated.
Will it tell me which employees to let go?
No. DecisionIQ works at the level of teams, functions and plans. It never scores, ranks or recommends action on any individual employee.
Cost out your next workforce decision before it reaches the board.
Start free with the full diagnostic and two saved scenarios. Upgrade when you want to save, share and export.