Any business needs to operate with a solid strategy first and foremost, not just in delivering profit and solutions, but in its workforce. Strategic workforce planning is a proactive, data-driven process that aligns an organisation’s workforce with its business strategy and goals. This involves analysing the current workforce supply and future demand to identify components such as skills gaps, anticipating hiring needs, and developing solutions to ensure the right people are in place to drive business success, but how can strategic workforce planning propel your business in the right direction?
Anticipating and Planning for Change
By establishing key metric benchmarks, businesses can be informed about pressing workforce issues and equipped with the tools to anticipate and plan for changes in the employee pool.
Decreasing Hiring Costs
A detailed overview of productivity levels and the overall headcount can allow the business to hire more efficiently, which looks to the long term and improves operations in the meantime, while also decreasing recruitment costs and high churn rates.
Improving the Recruitment Process
Businesses should understand what employees need from a business, and when we incorporate strategic planning, we can save time in the recruitment process because we are hiring the right person the first time.
Identifying Gaps in the Talent Pipeline
When the workforce strategy and business goals are aligned, it’s easier to identify the future hires needed for growth while addressing the existing skills gaps that need filling.
Preparing for Future Scenarios
Ultimately, as a business moves forward, strategic workforce planning can transform the workforce to meet future challenges, whether it’s implementing a new process or restructuring the employees.
Why the Best Recruitment Strategy is Based on Growth and Retention
In our experience as a consultancy service, the best approach to recruiting is based on a growth/retention strategy rather than an immediate need. Being proactive and anticipating the long term rather than just reacting to immediate hiring needs is beneficial for several reasons:
It Allows You to Build a Pipeline of Qualified Candidates
When you identify those interested in your company for the long term rather than those who are purely looking for experience within a specific skill set, you are able to draw from a pool of prime candidates when positions open up, which is far more efficient than the reactive approach.
Ensures New Employees Go the Distance
Investing in a solid onboarding process, training, career development, and investing in a positive workplace culture from the start makes it far more likely that new employees will become engaged, productive members of the team who will stay with you for the long term.
Enables Efficient Workforce Planning
Proactively hiring for future needs, as well as current ones, allows a company to anticipate upcoming skills gaps. Reactive hiring is a very short-sighted practice, but when you anticipate who can benefit the business to support growth at every stage, this means a far better understanding of what a company needs to thrive in the long term.
Improves the Candidate’s Experience
The hiring process is intimidating from the perspective of any potential employee. A candidate should always expect a hiring process where they feel valued rather than interrogated. When we hire reactively, this often leads to a negative impression of the company because we rush over decisions, do not plan properly, and communicate poorly. With a bit more time focusing on the workforce and understanding what is necessary to thrive over the coming years, we will know what we want and can make the candidate feel at ease through the application stages.
Strengthens the Employer Brand
Organisations that promote themselves as a great place to work make it more attractive to top talent, which means that you are making a name for yourself with relatively little effort. Word of mouth is a far more effective marketing method than anything else, and when an employer practises what they preach in the hiring process and beyond, their reputation will precede themselves.
A solid recruitment strategy is more than just preparing people for a job interview, but it allows you to find the person who’s not just going to do the job but is an invaluable piece of material in the fabric of your business. Our consultancy services ensure that our clients can analyse and develop a recruitment strategy based on strategic workforce planning. Business growth is not exclusively about profit; it’s supposed to be about people, and this is why the right person can propel your business forward in more ways than you can imagine.
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