New Years’ Eve is a great time for setting personal goals — get fit, change careers, call your parents more.
End of financial year (EOFY) is much the same for business. It’s the time when objectives are set for the year ahead and plans are put into motion.
So how do you create a plan and how do you get much-needed stakeholders on side?
Establish a clear baseline
Part of planning for EOFY is sitting down and understanding what went well — and what didn’t — in the previous year, and balancing the books so you know what you’re working with.
Charlie Milne, Global Head of Talent Strategy at SiteMinder, says it’s a good time to clear the slate. “The EOFY is about closing out any outstanding actions and, where possible, creating a fresh start for the year ahead. To make sure you have a clean start, ensure all payments related to the expiring financial year have been made and that any pending are accrued so that they don’t seep into the new year spend.”
Ruby Lee, Head of Recruitment at Cogent, says to start with an audit. “First, review your results for the current year. How many interviews did you undertake, how many placements did you make, how big was your pipeline, what was your placement ratio? You need to establish a baseline of your activity and results before you can plan ahead with any certainty.”
Create a vision of what you want to achieve
You know you want to move the company forward, but how do new hires achieve that big-picture vision? Now’s the time to work on understanding how your recruitment activities make great things happen.
For Milne, her vision is to attract innovative talent to enable SiteMinder’s growth. “To support our company to grow at speed, we need access to key technical talent to allow us to continue to develop the best products in market,” she says.
“In order to source these talented people, we need a roadmap that clearly articulates our skill requirements and timing, as well as a pathway to help us connect with those people.”
For Shayna King, recruitment consultant at Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG), her goal is to change the way roles at Flight Centre are perceived by candidates to enable growth. “We want to change people’s perception about the role of a travel consultant with the FCTG,” she says.
“When you join FCTG, you are joining a global company and starting a career as opposed to a job. Not only is the role of a travel consultant incredibly challenging, but there is a huge amount of opportunity for personal and professional development within such a large, global company.”
Getting down to nuts and bolts
King recommends reverse-engineering a plan.
“Make a plan, then before putting it into action try to predict what could impact your plan to the point it needs to pivot, and understand the factors that could make your plan fail,” she says.
“By doing this, you will strengthen your plan until it’s able to withstand challenges, and it will be easier to stick to.”
Once you’ve got your vision, Milne recommends looking at how you can free up existing resources to be more effective.
“Conduct a time audit with your team on how they spend their days and weeks and review this against your goals. Are you spending time in the actions that will help you deliver the right business outcomes?
“Look for opportunities to automate administrative or low-value activities to free up time to be invested in the areas with the potential to deliver against business goals.”
How to get funding
Like any budgeting exercise, there are business needs and there are recruitment wants, but there are a few rules to follow that will help you succeed in getting what you ask for.
Milne advises that benchmarking helps to understand whether your budget is achievable.
“Unless there is appetite for significant change, budgets rarely change significantly year-on-year, so start with a clear understanding of what has been invested previously and where, as well as the hiring figures,” she says.
“Once you know your current cost-per-hire, benchmark it against industry best practice and look for opportunities to invest differently to achieve higher levels of productivity, such as reducing cost-per-hire, reducing attrition or improving quality-of-hire by redirecting funds from one area into another.”
While significant changes might be uncommon, Lee says it can’t hurt to ask.
“Think about your budget as a wish-list,” she says. You can’t get it ‘wrong’, so long as you have links to how it’ll help the company’s vision and long-term strategy,”.
“It’s a competitive market out there and it is often hard to get a candidate’s attention. If you’re investing in your employment brand, or a great team of recruiters or productivity tools to help you out then you give your campaign every chance of success. After all, everything starts with great people, so don’t be afraid to ask for the budget you want.”
Get company buy-in while making your plan
In order to get buy in, King says your network is important for success.
“Think outside of your role, and how you can work with other people in your business for greater success. Building a strong network throughout your company is incredibly important [to achieve broad buy-in].”
Lee says it takes a village.
“Get others involved. Recruitment strategies and initiatives are the responsibility of the entire business, not just the HR department. Let the business know what you’re aiming to achieve for them and get their buy-in. In my experience, everyone has input into recruitment activities so you should have no problem getting feedback.”
