Meaning – The term headcount, refers to the number of personnel that has been assigned to the manager, or the number of people present for a particular event at any given point in time.
Whenever a new project is to begin in an organization, the manager of the project is the first person to be assigned. This is followed by the organization assigning a group of people who will work under the manager. Once the assignments and roles are decided, the manager takes a headcount of the number of people who will be working under him/her. This allows the manager to keep track of the progress of each employee under him, without getting mixed up with other employees in the organization.
Example of usage – “When he was given a list of names of the people who would be working under him, the first thing he did was take a headcount, to see if the two matched.”