Recruitment has been a sensitive subject for businesses over the last few years. It has been a candidate-led market with organisations not always finding the key staff they need for their roles. This has resulted in businesses looking at different options to address their recruitment needs. And if you don’t already, one thing we’d recommend is starting to analyse your workforce.
Analysing your workforce, or workforce planning, is not a new invention. There are references to it in the 1880s by Frederick Winslow Taylor, an American mechanical engineer, and industrial management specialist. The boom years of the 80s and 90s saw a return to long-term workforce planning and analysis as did the downturn following 2008. Shifts in working styles and patterns, following the pandemic has seen an increase in organisations starting to analyse their workforce but with a shorter focus than before.
Why should you analyse your workforce?
The CIPD defines workforce planning as the process of balancing labour supply (skills) against the demand. By analysing your workforce, you can start to plan for future recruitment needs, skills gaps or potential retirements. Whether your business is focused on growth or maintaining a level, analysing your workforce, can help you to balance future needs against the recruitment market.
Our workforces never stay static. Understanding your employees and their future focuses such as retirement or career gaps is important. And then matching this to where you want to create new roles, or where you will have future empty roles, can help to plan your recruitment strategy.
Where and when to start with workforce planning?
Understanding your current workforce alongside your planned future is key. This might be through regular employee appraisals, employee surveys or both. This helps you to conduct a gap analysis of your workforce. Thinking about future business development alongside current skills gaps can help you identify future roles.
Depending on your business size this might all sound a bit overwhelming. Workforce analysis should bring together your board or senior management team. You need to all agree on direction and strategies for recruiting the right people. And if you’re in a business that doesn’t have a dedicated HR function, this can be where looking for external help can add value to your workforce analysis.
How can a recruitment consultancy help with workforce analysis and planning?
A crucial part of workforce planning is understanding the recruitment market. This is where a recruitment consultancy, like ourselves, can add value to your planning. While a traditional recruitment agency may focus just on talent, we focus on your wider recruitment strategy.
Talking to Good Egg Recruitment during your workforce planning can add that understanding of the trends in the labour market. We can provide information on whether the roles you are creating will be easy to fill and how long recruiting for them might take. Not only that, but we can also help you develop a recruitment strategy based on your workforce data.
If you are trying to wear all the ‘hats’ in your business including HR and recruitment working with Good Egg Recruitment can help. We can give you your time back as well as strategy, planning and workforce analysis that will add value to your business. Talk to nicola@goodeggrecruitment.com or annette@goodeggrecruitment.com to find out more.