Whether you’re currently budgeting for 2024 or about to start, creating a roadmap for recruitment and staffing success in conjunction with your financial 2024 budget might be a good idea.
Companies never want unexpected staffing issues, but expenses will undoubtedly increase throughout the year. Having a plan and a roadmap for handling these recruitment expenses could be of great value.
How to proceed with your recruiting expenses roadmap:
- Have each department do a headcount assessment of personnel.
- Identify employees that you must retain.
- Identify those you may have to upgrade upon.
- Identify flight risks who may leave.
- Identify upcoming retirements.
- Identify positions that will be required by, and possibly funded by, your vendor partners.
Identify employees that you must retain:
You may need to allocate some dollars to this group. Training expenses, education reimbursement, and spot bonuses can all be tools/investments to keep your top players on board.
Identify those you may have to upgrade and identify flight risks who may leave:
Do you have employees identified who could step up and do the roles of this group of employees? Do you have a replacement on your bench, or do you need to allocate time and funds for a replacement search because you lack the specific talent on your team already?
Identify upcoming retirements!
This is critical. You need to plan for retirements well in advance, at least six months out, especially if you want to transition knowledge and ensure seamless operations in the role. Typically, retirement has an impact as the employee could be a long-term employee whose talent cannot be replaced overnight. Thus, you must plan for internal replacement, recruitment, and/or training. If you go with an internal replacement, you must also plan for their replacement!
Identify positions that your vendor partners will require.
This is typically a requirement to have the product line. Some vendors, typically key suppliers, require specialists dedicated to selling or supporting their products. We suggest asking for some level of co-payment for that position, but there will be some sort of expense allocation in the end.
Conclusion
It is a trickle-down process, but, in the end, a replacement from outside your company will likely be needed to fill at least one role (and possibly several).
How do you go about finding that replacement?
- Allocate HR / internal recruiters’ time accordingly.
- Spend money to post the roles on social media and job boards.
- Pay employees a bonus for a referral.
- Hire an outside recruitment firm.
There will be minimal surprises by having all these positions on a roadmap, which will allow you to pinpoint upcoming needs and funding associated with each replacement. You must also allocate funds for unforeseen occurrences when a key employee leaves the company. While planning, consider your action plan if a high-level exec or top sales rep leaves. Will this trigger the need to get outside recruitment services involved?
The above just represents some scenarios that require attention via the budgeting process. We often get called to do a frantic search for some sort of replacement. You can never sidestep a replacement search, as it will eventually have a bottom-line impact. Consider the cost of lost productivity, lost revenue (if a sales role), disruption to your company (and maybe customers), the loss of a trained employee who knows your company, and the time it takes to recruit for the position. This often results in taking time away from performing other job duties, higher stress due to the search for finding a qualified candidate, interviewing, possibly travel expenses, and more; advanced planning and a recruiter can help ease that pain.
CONTACT US:
Please contact us for more information on the above recruitment road mapping process or to discuss recruitment strategy or needs.
John Salvadore
Managing Partner
jsalvadore@grncoastal.com
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