“Without effective workforce planning, the recruitment function is blind”

Workforce planning is crucial to enabling a leading multinational information and analytics group to grow and meet its targets in the seven different market sectors in which it operates.

“Without effective workforce planning, the recruitment function is blind,” explains the global Head of Recruitment for one of the group’s businesses. “If we don’t have a clear understanding of which strategic initiatives are in the pipeline for the different parts of the business over the next 12 months, all we are able to do is to be reactive.”

The group’s recruitment team works closely with its HR business partners and finance teams to understand how the business plans to achieve revenue growth and what headcount is needed in the different functions to support this growth, allowing for staff turnover as well as new hires. Collaborating with the business enables the recruitment team to predict how incremental increases in headcount should be phased in over the course of the next year and whether the team needs to boost its own resources, perhaps by bringing in additional generalist or specialist recruiters.

Once the strategic hiring plans of the different parts of the business have been identified, they are consolidated into the workforce plan, which is a single spreadsheet for the whole business. Data can then be taken from the plan and analysed according to business unit, function and location, which provides further insight to both the recruitment team and management.

Good workforce planning makes “the world of difference” to the success of the business, says the Head of Recruitment. “We can calculate the cost of what not having a sales person in a seat costs us every week. So if we can start to pipeline candidates, get people warm and get them to understand that we may have a role for them in the next fortnight, then the time to hire drops dramatically, which saves us money.”

AUTHOR

Jon Mannall
EMEA Managing Director and Global Head of Sales, Solutions and Innovation, Hays Talent Solutions
Jonathan is the EMEA Managing Director and Global Head of Sales, Solution and Innovation for Hays Talent Solutions, having joined Hays in 2011. Previous roles held at Hays included Client Director, Service Delivery Director and Head of Sales for the UK. He is now responsible for leading the approach to engaging and securing new clients and to ensuring that the products and services offered by Hays Talent Solutions continue to meet the changing needs of our global, regional and local customers. For more information about Hays Talent Solutions, visit our website. 

Prior to joining Hays, and after completing his Masters in Philosophy and Management, Jon worked in the RPO and MSP sector for 10 years with a range of Financial Services, Public Sector, IT & Telecommunications, and Insurance clients in Sales and Operations Director roles.