Related Posts
How accurately can managers plan for future human resources needs?
If you’re an HR leader or manager planning for the future, you probably feel caught between a rock and a hard place.
The last 18 months have made it painfully clear that planning for future human resource needs is anything but easy.
In fact, I would argue the traditional approach to HR planning it is doomed to fail.
Nobody could have possibly accounted for the pandemic in their 2020 resource plans. When COVID hit, businesses had to lay off recruiters and many other roles across the organization en masse.
It may have been the smart move in the moment. But ever since the economy started to pick up in the summer of 2020, many businesses have failed to keep pace with their hiring needs.
Now, let’s be clear about the damage this does to your business…
Open Seats Are Killing Your Business
For key roles, open seats have a direct impact on revenue.
Meanwhile, understaffing on any team damages morale, hurts the customer experience, affects our team’s performance, and leads to greater turnover.
Your customers couldn’t wait for you to get back to full staff.
If you couldn’t keep pace with your hiring needs, you almost certainly lost market share.
It’d be easy to blame it all on COVID and assume 2020 was an anomaly.
But if you work in HR or recruiting, you know full well that resource planning is hardly efficient even in the best of years.
Even without a pandemic in the mix, today’s business environment is simply too competitive and fast-paced for traditional resource planning strategies.
Every year, most internal recruiting teams find themselves either over or understaffed – through no fault of their own.
HR teams end up stuck between a rock and a hard place.
So what are the options?
Option A is hiring enough recruiters to manage their hiring spikes and waste a ton of money when hiring needs fall off.
Option B is staffing their recruiting team to the mean and expecting that hiring will fall behind at times. Unfortunately, both of these options can create damage to the business and to the health of the team.
Let’s be frank. This is not the best way to run a business!
Managers Can Plan for Future Human Resource Needs Without Overcommitting
The success of your business and your recovery hinges on your ability to keep recruiting costs under control AND meet hiring needs in a timely fashion.
But the reality is that’s simply impossible for managers to accurately plan for future human resource needs.
Future staffing needs, future growth, and other variables are simply too hard to forecast.
HR leaders need an option C for this planning process. That option is a flexible solution for dedicated external support.
Typically, when companies think about dedicated recruiting support, they think of the classic RPO model.
They think of expensive, two-to-three-year engagements that are limiting and deliver so-so value.
Here at Qualigence, we offer a dramatically different solution that changes the equation. Our dedicated recruiting solutions offer you access to one or more of our recruiters for as little as 30 days all the way up to 18 months or more.
You only pay for our team’s time and expertise, not commissions. That’s important because commissions skew the focus to quantity over quality.
This model allows you to better manage your headcount and use dedicated support when hiring needs spike.
You get to pay for what you need, only when you need it. In today’s day and age, the ability to gracefully manage hiring ebbs and flows can make all the difference.
Managers Can Plan for Future Human Resource Needs Without Wasting Money
It’s not right that businesses assume they must manage hiring slumps and spikes alike with the same fixed capacity.
You do not have to choose between overpaying or letting seats go unfilled.
There’s a better way – and it’s insanity to keep applying the same ineffective process to meet fluctuating needs!
Article authored by Qualigence CEO Steve Lowisz