Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

The best way to illustrate the use case for a waterfall chart is through a specific example. Imagine that you are an HR business partner and want to understand and communicate how employee headcount has changed over the past year for the client group you support. A waterfall chart showing this breakdown might look something like Figure 2.17. Figure 2.17 Waterfall chart On the left-hand side, we see what the employee headcount for the given team was at the beginning of the year. As we move to the right, first we encounter the incremental additions: new hires and employees transferring into the team from other parts of the organization. This is followed by the deductions: transfers out of the team to other parts of the organization and attrition. The final column represents employee headcount at the end of the year, after the additions and deductions have been applied to the beginning of year headcount.