Analysing your recruitment needs is the opportunity to go beyond merely considering what roles you need to fill and how you’re going to do this. It’s a time to look at where your business is going and who are the people that are going to push your business forward. Your first step is to review what you already have. It doesn’t matter what the industry or size of the company you work for. You can examine your recruitment to date, HR processes and data to enhance them for the future.
When planning and thinking strategically about your recruitment, you have the opportunity to examine the skills shortages in your business, squash demand for areas of high employer turnover, expand headcount in areas of growth and initiate resource planning for significant, bigger projects.
The current recruitment market is very dynamic so you need the right strategy and tools to move your business forward. Remember though, start by reviewing what is in place and healthily estimate how many people you’re going to need.
Analysing staff turnover
Start by examining staff turnover so you can get an idea of what is needed to keep headcount level. Are there areas of your business with consistent high turnover? Is this going to be an ongoing issue? While there’s no exact science to predicting turnover, reviewing your previous year’s numbers and beyond is the best starting point to identify trends and make predictions.
- Identify and examine areas of high turnover and identify whether these will continue to need resourcing.
- Calculate and plot your turnover rate to see how turnover is fluctuating and identify trends.
- Use engagement surveys to see if headcount is likely to be higher or lower mapped out against previous years.
- Produce a physical number for expected turnover.
Areas of growth
Next look at areas of growth or big projects for your business that will need resourcing. This could be anything from substantial growth in a team, a new product that needs resources or a new office.
- Ensure you have resource meetings to find out the scope of the work and what will be required.
- Get an understanding of roles and responsibilities and how these fit into the organisation.
- Try to understand wider business implications and the need for additional headcount in these areas.
- Produce a physical number for the expected headcount required.
Skills shortages
When starting this process, it’s important to know what skills the business needs and wants from its employees. This can be looking at the company values or speaking to senior management about new products and long-term strategy.
- Get a good understanding of what the business wants from its people including long-term strategy.
- Get a thorough understanding of existing skills in the business through review scores and management surveys.
- Map out skills. Look at what is important for the business and compare average team scores against team requirements.
- Examine training and ways of improving recruitment to improve identified skills shortages.
When planning recruitment for the year ahead it’s important to get a good idea of the headcount required. Getting a physical number on this allows you to estimate your recruitment budget and resource to fill these roles. Then you can add value straight away by planning the business’ growth, filling skills shortages and knowing headcount and budget before your recruitment has even started.