Why recruitment planning is especially important now

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During the upheaval of the pandemic, your business would be forgiven for recruiting ad-hoc just to get the staff it needs for right now. There also continues to be uncertainty around the effects on the labour markets as the UK leaves the EU.

Failing to plan ahead for the future skills your business will need, and not identifying the employees you’ll need with these skills, is surprisingly common. Research by The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) shows that 43% of employers are on the same path.

But now is the time to take a new approach. The labour market is changing, and many businesses are finding it hard to find the skilled staff they need. Unprecedented circumstances mean the future is harder than ever to predict. And that makes workforce planning even more important.

Faced with an increasing number of hard-to-fill vacancies, what are the key considerations to make sure your organisation not only recruits but retains the right talent for the future?

Recruitment planning in uncertain times

In a nutshell, it’s about pinpointing the talent and skills your business will need in the future, finding out whether or not your current workforce has those skills and then deciding on the talent you’ll need to recruit in order to meet those needs. There’s plenty of helpful advice on workforce planning from the CIPD.

Retaining your current workforce

Dealing with employee turnover is part of being an employer. But it’s now definitely on the rise. A study by Gartner shows that 91% of HR managers are worried about the levels of staff leaving in the immediate future.

That’s hardly surprising. It’s not only costly to recruit and train new members of staff, but can be disruptive on the rest of the workforce. And hiring the wrong candidate can be a costly mistake, too.

So it figures that keeping hold of the staff you currently have should be top priority. And it’s probably time to look at your retention strategies if you haven’t already.

Aside from competitive salary, that means a real focus on offering the most attractive and relevant workplace perks and benefits. As we know talking to candidates we recruit via HR GO, flexibility around when and where to work counts highly, too.

Looking at turnover data

Planning a future workforce depends on having loyal, engaged employees who go the distance with you. So if staff are leaving it’s crucial to find out why.

Exit interviews can give useful employee insights, but only form part of the picture. You can get a wider view by drilling down into who’s resigned in the last two years and finding out reasons why.

Once this data is organised by factors like department, role and salary, can you identify any trends? Perhaps there are reasons you hadn’t been taken account of, and can be acted on in the future to improve your retention strategy.

In the current climate, doing everything you can to plan ahead for future skills and staff needs could make a real difference.

Talk to us for recruitment planning help

At HR GO, we have deep sector knowledge and experience of helping clients plan for future workforce needs. We can also help you spot any patterns in employees who are leaving. As we’re about to head into a new year, now’s the perfect time to get your workforce needs handled. So get in touch for a chat about our services.