With the Great Resignation in full swing, companies can't afford to make wrong hiring decisions. While over 20 million Americans quit their jobs in the second half of 2021, the top talent is still hard to find.

If recruitment and sourcing are a serious challenge for your company, your strategic workforce planning strategies could use an overhaul. Let's take a closer look at what can be done to hire better quality candidates amidst the Turnover Tsunami and beyond.

1. Study Long-Term Business Goals

The key part of strategic workforce planning is finding the right talent to benefit your company for many years to come. Filling talent holes simply because of the current shortage could lead to short term wins, but longer-term problems. These include quick quits, disruption within your company if the right person isn’t in place or strain on the team if their role is suddenly abandoned. It also puts an economic burden on the company itself when someone leaves.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2021 report, the overall turnover rate across the U.S. industries is 57.3%. With the cost of hiring a new employee reaching 100% of their annual salary, such turnover can wreak havoc on a company of any size.

While speed in attracting top talent is important so is in-depth research into its potential. If the candidate can fill the existing gap quickly but become useless in the nearest future, the ROI of such hire is incredibly low.

Take the time to study your company's long-term business and talent goals. Doing this research before the hiring process could save your team time and money.

2. Explore Recruitment and Hiring Automation Options

High HR costs are a serious headache for many companies. In some cases, they may hinder strategic workforce planning efforts. For example, traditional reference checks may be costing you at least $144 per candidate. Meanwhile, recruiters may spend up to $1,000 per week sourcing candidates for a single role.

Besides being expensive, traditional recruitment and hiring are time-consuming. While you are checking references to fill one role, you may lose out on more candidates to the competition.

HR automation tools can help you speed up the process and cut hiring and recruitment costs, providing better opportunities for comprehensive workforce planning.

For example, Crosschq's Recruit can help source high-quality candidates effortlessly, giving your team excellent talent search capabilities. Candidate profiles are enriched with past performance, education, and soft skills, plus you are alerted in real-time via Slack or email when a new candidate opts into your talent pool.



Meanwhile, Crosschq 360 simplifies the reference checking process, providing data-driven insights into your candidate's potential. By receiving candidate reports within 48 hours and not having to leave your ATS, you can build your candidate pipelines quickly and efficiently, as well as hire up to 95% faster.  It also provides your candidate a great experience in the hiring process, which is so important in this highly competitive candidate’s market.

[Read More: Candidate Assessment Tools]

3. Organize Internal Communication

No matter how many departments your company has, each one has something to say about hiring needs. It's up to the TA expert to ensure seamless communication with each department in order to gain insight into the company's hiring needs.

Opinion surveys are an excellent tool for evaluating hiring needs. These surveys don't just allow the department heads, managers, and company leaders to share their opinion, but also help you evaluate the diversity and skill levels of each department.

With this data in your hands, you can identify talent gaps and predict future turnover issues.

4. Conduct a SWOT Analysis

To gain insight into your company's hiring needs, consider conducting a SWOT analysis. While usually used for other aspects of business operations, this analysis can become an excellent driving force behind strategic workforce planning.

To make sure the SWOT analysis is effective, you need to involve as many parties as possible. Consider asking stakeholders for their opinions and insights into the company's future. Different points of view are the key to a successful analysis.

You can use the collected data to plan your next hiring steps.

5. Look at External Factors

External factors often affect your hiring needs more than whatever is going on inside the company.

• The Great Resignation – Increasingly more employees are leaving their jobs to seek better opportunities. Employees are now needing you less than you need them and as a result, the competition for top talent is extremely fierce and it has created a candidate’s market. This can change your approach to hiring and drive you to leverage new tools like Crosschq.
• Baby Boomers – The retiring Baby Boomers are creating a talent gap. By 2030, all of them will reach the age of 65. It's imperative to keep this factor in mind while exploring hiring opportunities for older specialists.
• COVID-19 pandemic – The pandemic is making employees rethink their needs. Many of them are focusing on well-being and flexibility. High salaries and excellent benefits are no longer the winning combination. You need to change your recruitment strategies to adjust to the new requirements.

Other external factors to consider are the political environment, economic developments, and technological advances.

6. Centralize Your Data

The key to strategic workforce planning is the right data. In many companies, it's scattered across a variety of resources, including CRM and ATS. Consolidating all the information into one source can help you see the full picture and make the right planning decisions.  

To do that, you may want to rethink your tech stack and invest in HR technologies that integrate with one another seamlessly.

Streamline Strategic Workforce Planning with Crosschq

Top-notch strategic workforce planning is the pillar of successful business operations and growth. While the entire country is struggling with recruitment and retention problems the importance of this type of planning is especially high.

With Crosschq's hiring and recruitment technologies in your corner, you can streamline workforce planning and take your hiring decisions to a new level. Our 360, Recruit, and Analytics solutions can become the driving force behind competitive planning.

Learn how Crosschq can help make an immediate impact on your business from day one. Request a demo today with one of our team product experts.