6 Tips for Designing a Hiring Plan

At this time of the year, many companies are in a planning mode.  Having a properly sized workforce will allow you to meet the demands of customers while ensuring labor costs are kept under control.  Here are a few tips to keep in mind when designing a hiring plan.

1) If you are growing, review cash flow statements and plan to hire more workers at certain levels of sales. This will ensure you will be able to meet customer demand to keep growing.  Reviewing your cash flow statements will ensure you will have enough cash in the bank to pay new workers.

2) If you aren’t growing, how many hires do you need to keep your company the same size? According to Compensationforce.com, the average turnover rate for all companies in the US for 2014 was 15.7%. This is up from 15.1% in 2013.  Therefore, if your company has 100 employees, you will need to hire 16 + people per year, just to stay the same size.

3) Do you take into account company culture when hiring employees? If your company has a very specific culture, is this addressed in questions during the interview process?

4) Review your true cost per hire. This can include costs for HR Professionals to post advertisements and/or managers to conduct interviews.  How many interviews will it take to make a placement?  Concentrate on methods that have the best results and are the most cost effective.  Complete at least an annual review of your job posting sites.  The ROI can change dramatically over time.

5) Be realistic on length of time it takes to fill an open position. According to a report fromIndeed.com, one of the largest job posting sites, 33% of all jobs are posted for over 3 months.  Many companies are reports record high lengths of time to fill openings.  Larger companies must continually interview talent to ensure they have sufficient candidates in the pipeline.

6) Create succession plans for retiring workers. Many companies have a very high percentage of workers who are close to retirement age.  According to AARP, about 8000 baby boomers turn age 65 each day in the US.  Because of the high levels of skill and work ethic of baby boomers, we often find it necessary to fill 1 retirement vacancy with 2 individuals.

Keep in mind flexible labor options such as temporary staffing, in order to quickly change the skill-set of your workforce, or respond to seasonal demands.