How do you know it is the right time to welcome new employees to your company? What are the indicators that suggest you need to hire now? Is it always about having vacancies? What about growth and survival?
The act of hiring is a vital practice to all types of organizations. Commonly, when organizations are actively looking to fill their vacancies or even attempting to expand their teams, they assign a deadline in order to accomplish this task by. Preceding this stage, a budget is set by the HR department with the help of the finance department in order to stay aligned with the organization’s financial goals. Once those two major tasks are done, the process of searching, screening, interviewing, and hiring candidates begins.
But, at your organization, you may be following a different method of hiring. Assuming you practice ad-hoc hiring, you might be wondering how these companies pre-plan their workforce needs. And, if you already predict your workforce needs and hire accordingly, you might want to double-check the reasons you’re hiring so many newcomers. In either case, Bayt.com has compiled five signs that show your organization is ready to hire.
1. Are You Focusing on Survival Rather than Growth?
Year-to-year growth is part of almost every organization’s goals. But, staying ahead of the game in the business world is no longer as easy as it used to be, and due to the tough economic environment, some companies struggle to even survive, mind you to focus on achieving the growth they had in mind.
One of the reasons this occurs is because organizations underestimate the workload they have, while overestimating their staff’s capacity and capability to stay productive. Don’t let your organization get to a stage where you’re missing deadlines, or even worse, missing out on new opportunities and clients because your staff cannot take on the extra workload.
If you feel that your organization has struggled to grow because of understaffed departments, and that you’re constantly overworked, it’s time to think about increasing the number of your staff to better divide the workload.
2. Are You Turning down New Opportunities?
Just like we mentioned in the previous section, if you’re missing out or turning down new opportunities that may have a positive financial impact on your organization, then it’s in your best interest to hire more employees to take care of these opportunities. Hiring in this case will have a twofold benefit:
1. Dedicated Employees
If you make the decision of hiring more employees to take on new opportunities, they will be dedicated to the tasks you assign to them. This means they won’t be as overworked as your existing employees who cannot take on any more business opportunities and they will will dedicate their time to handling new business growth avenues and strategies to increase value.
2. Increased productivity
If you play your cards right with delegation and workload division, you’ll also be able to bring back some of the productivity that you were missing out on from your existing overworked employees. Creating a balance and a sense of wellness among your staff is likely to yield many positive results in terms of satisfaction, productivity, and overall success.
Of course, the financial aspect of your organization needs to be taken into account when making this hiring decision. Will this new opportunity cover the cost of hiring X number of employees? And this brings us to the next point:
3. Are Your Finances Secure?
Just like we mentioned earlier, the HR department needs to coordinate with the financial department before setting a hiring budget. And, whether you’re planning ahead or hiring on the spot, you need to consult your management, your department’s budget.
One of the most important factors to consider is the ROI (Return on Investment) that you’ll be receiving with each new hire. Obviously, when hiring a new employee, you expect a certain level of productivity from them. This includes accomplishing tasks in a timely manner, being communicative with other departments to smoothen out the workflow, and having a sense of responsibility and ownership over their tasks. By assessing those factors, you can begin to formulate an idea of how much return in terms of growth, profit, or increased business this employee will bring to you. Of course with certain job roles, such as sales and business development, you might be able to specifically measure the predicted value added from your new hires in a dollar figure.
After making your assessments, you’ll need to consult your financial department in order to get their take on how much your organization can afford to spend on recruiting new employees. If all goes well, and the stars align, you can take the next step with comfort and ease.
4. Do You Have the Space and Resources to Grow?
One of the requirements when hiring new employees is having sufficient office space. You might be thinking that this requirement is only necessary when hiring a big number of employees at once, but it can also become a problem down the line when you realize your hiring needs still haven’t been met.
So, before deciding on the number of new hires your organization requires, you should check the number of people that you can accommodate comfortably. An overcrowded office can look bad, sound loud, and not be as productive as you think.
There are other resources to consider aside from physical space. Time, for example, is a crucial resource to keep in mind as well. Searching for, screening, and interviewing candidates is no easy task. And, if you or your subordinates are too short on time, lack sourcing technologies, or can’t afford a talent sourcing expert, you’re about to discover a solution to your problem. With Bayt.com Source2Hire, we take care of the hard part for you. All we need is a detailed description of what you’re looking for in your next hire, and we’ll provide you with a shortlist of top notch candidates for you to interview!
But, if you’d like to do the research yourself and take your pick from 30,000,000+ CVs, complimented by 36+ smart filtration tools, you’ll find exactly what you need in a quick and efficient manner with Bayt.com CV Search.
Finally, if you require a simpler way to source candidates, try posting your job on Bayt.com. Instead of using filters to search for candidates, you can create questionnaires for applicants to answer in order to screen them automatically! And, the best part is that all those CVs will land directly in your inbox.
Post hiring, a further step ahead would be considering the time it will take to train and prepare the newcomers to assume complete responsibility of their job role. The more experienced your new staff is, the easier it will be for them to settle in. So keep that in mind when screening CVs!
If you’re looking to hire fresh grads, always look for non-work related experience that makes a candidate stand out. Examples of this include training courses directly related to the vacancy, any certificates or merites received during their academic years, and any technical skills such as knowledge of certain computer programs that will help the fresh grad perform well at their job. But, at the end of the day, keep in mind fresh graduates still need an adequate onboarding program in order for them to fully understand their tasks and how to perform them.
5. Are You Receiving Complaints?
Receiving complaints is a big deal, especially if the reason behind them is understaffing. In this case, complaints may come from either internal or external sources. Even though both types should be taken very seriously, external complaints tend to hold more weight especially if they were coming from clients.
Complaints from clients can be caused by failure to meet deadlines, inconsistent communication, or even shortcomings in terms of task accomplishment. Complaints can have a very negative effect on your relationship with clients, and in turn, affect their loyalty towards your organization. And, as we all know, retaining existing clients is much more cost effective than seeking new ones, which is why their satisfaction should be a top priority and that might necessitate hiring new employees.
The other side of complaints comes internally from your employees. If you start noticing that your employees are constantly overworked but under delivering and are voicing their concerns on how stressful the work environment has become, it’s time to bring in some back up.
We hope that these signs help you decide whether or not your organization is ready to hire. But, don’t forget that some of the signs may become constraints later on, such as financial security and the availability of resources. Consider your next hiring decision carefully, and once you’ve settled on beginning your recruitment process, be sure to visit Bayt.com for CV Search tools, Job Postings, and many more online recruitment solutions tailored to your specific hiring needs!