Hiring strategies straight from the field

Posted by: Joel Capperella

By working with our clients to help them better manage their labor-related expenses, I’ve had plenty of insight into shifting hiring practices throughout the year. The shift, I believe, can be summed up with a single word: maturation.

What we’ve seen becoming more frequent is organizations of every type striving to consider their entire workforce singularly. This effort is so every single area of labor-related expenses, both direct and indirect, can be controlled.

Some examples:

• A large chemicals firm is aggressively evaluating the manner in which they leverage their standard Statement of Work (SOW) processes to identify areas where simple packaged skill sets can be used for more cost effective staff augmentation. This same firm seeks to better define their talent acquisition processes in every area of their ‘non-employee’ workforce.
• A global business application development company froze hiring and eliminated all of their recruitment contractors shortly after the crisis of September 2008. They now seek to establish recruitment best practices that will allow them to quickly ramp up targeted areas of staff without incurring the cost of recruitment they experienced pre-2008 financial crisis again. In addition, they have consolidated the entirety of their contingent workforce spend in North America, as well identified approximately $2M worth of improperly categorized independent contractors.
• A retailer has identified indirect unnecessary costs of their stores staff equaling approximately $9M annually. They are responding with a strategic scheduling initiative that allows them to aggressively staff stores with the right mix of personnel in order to help convert inventory to cash and increase revenue per store – both metrics directly associated to the talent found at each store.
• Another client of ours is preparing for the hiring uptick on the horizon by implementing an RPO program. During the lean times of the past few months, their corporate recruiting teams were downsized. To address late Q3 and Q4 hiring, this client is leveraging an outsourced approach to ensure talent acquisition. SLAs are met, and hiring managers are not burdened by the process.

In general, regardless of industry, most of our clients’ operations have streamlined dramatically. When our clients’ overall company revenue was increasing year-over-year, and the business units were meeting and exceeding goals, their corporate centers were often relegated to a “support function.” As recent as just one year ago, the business units determined much of the workforce composition, job categorization and talent acquisition channels.

But, the economic shift has given our clients a fortuitous opportunity. Over the past year, they’ve instituted controls that now provide leadership with a holistic view of their workforce. By enabling centralized practices, our clients are confident that they are positioned for success when market demand returns to peak levels. On the surface, this shift may appear convoluted, but by putting workforce processes and methodologies into place, our clients are freeing business units to build up the workforce. Now, hiring managers and divisional leadership may more indiscriminately engage contract labor and hire – as long as they follow corporate policies and practices for acquiring talent.