Recruitment Plans for 2021
Posted on 4th December 2020 at 16:29
You are probably planning for 2021 now. It is also a great time to start planning your recruitment for next year. If you haven’t ever done a workforce planning exercise for the year ahead, read on as to why you should and how to go about it. (and it’ll make your life a lot easier!)
By looking at your workforce needs over the next 12 months, means that you can plan your recruitment in a more proactive, rather than a reactive way. If you know what your business plans are for the next twelve months then you can plan to recruit the right people to help you deliver your short and long-term organisational goals.
So what 4 points should you consider?
Start by assessing your current situation and reviewing your current workforce. Who do you currently have that aren’t quite at the level that you require them to be? Regularly, when working with clients, I hear managers talking about people who they know are looking for their next role, or are under internal performance measures. What is the likelihood that you are going to lose these people in the next 12 months? Put these expected vacancies into the plan.
What plans do you have over the next 12 months for growth? What skills do you need to bring into the organisation over this period of time? Put these roles in order of priority and spread them across a time period. Having a big influx of new recruits into an organisation can change the culture of an organisation overnight and can make onboarding less effective.
Be realistic about how long it takes to find a new recruit! The candidate market is buoyant at the moment. With the advent of video interviewing and more people working from home, the actual candidate assessment doesn’t take very long at all. However, to give candidates time to apply you need to allow a couple of weeks so that everyone who is suitable and is interested in your role sees it. Also, think about the length of notice periods before a candidate can start. However, you can speed up your recruitment by allocating time within your recruitment plan for interviews so that candidates don’t need to wait weeks before you can get all the stakeholders in the same room. Some clients of ours put aside time bi-weekly so that however busy they get they know there is time that they can allocate.
Look at your recruitment budget – a great place to start is what did you spend on recruitment last year. I haven’t yet worked with a company that has this information to hand, but only by assessing what you have spent and what has and hasn’t worked can you work out how to deliver your 2021 strategy and what it will cost you. Most companies underestimate their recruitment costs by 90 – 95%. However, there is a cost to recruitment and you should consider it. If you are spending 80% of your recruitment budget on agencies and the quality of candidates isn’t generally very high then how could you spend this more effectively. Remember that the definition of madness is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.
If you would like some help as to where to start to look at your recruitment plans for 2021 please contact me on 0116 2080246 or email me at caroline@emerald-starfish.com
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