Speeding the hiring process with Business Process Workflows

MAKATI CITY, Philippines - Dec. 14, 2015 - PRLog -- According to CEB research, the average time it takes to fill a position has risen by 62 per cent between 2010 and 2015. The study found that average time to hire currently stands at 68 days – or 26 business days longer to fill a position than it did in 2010.

It is important for Organizations to think carefully about and understand the implications of slow hiring. Slow hiring not only runs the risk of losing top candidates to competitors, it also causes the loss of productivity and engagement with other staff members.

Interestingly, the increased time spent on the hiring process doesn’t result in any meaningful increase in quality of hire once the breakpoint of around 31 days is reached. As well as missing out on the top talent, companies that hire slowly must also consider the immediate cost to the business.

Having an open position puts pressure and stress on colleagues who not only have to pick up the additional work, but may also rely on the particular position to help them do their job effectively. On top of leading to burnout and reduced job satisfaction, employees have to try and compensate for the missing team member.

HR and the high cost of open roles;

The research report round the average vacancy cost equates to thousands of pesos per day per open position.

When compared to the average organization’s time to fill, it amounts to a loss of well over tens of thousands of pesos in lost productivity and recruiting costs within the 68 day time period.

There are immediate and very tangible implications, and some that are not as obvious but equally damaging to an organization. Some of the strongest applicants will be considering multiple offers, and the longer businesses take with decision-making, the greater the risk of losing them. The direct loss of productivity in the vacant role is a very clear and immediate cost, as is using temporary staffing arrangements.

Recruiters at organizations’ with streamlined hiring workflows have nearly halved the average time to fill a role compared to those with complex hiring workflows. Equally problematic for business, is the impact on the immediate team around the vacant role.

Work between peers is today so much more interdependent and connected; burnout and disengagement are common in team members as a result of the additional stretch and workload they take on to compensate for the loss of productivity in open positions.

All too often slow hiring times are combined with higher turnover. This can quickly become a vicious cycle for teams. (Also amounts to vast recruiting costs if not addressed quickly and efficiently).There is a common misconception that longer hiring times are the trade-off for better hiring decision.

Research shows that the increased time spent in the hiring process doesn’t result in any meaningful increase in quality of hire once the breakpoint of around 31 days is reached. (The average time to fill is 63 days, which means there is approximately a month of time over and above the breakpoint that is just not giving meaningful in terms of quality of hire).

3 steps for HR in speeding up time to hire;

HR leadership can significantly improve the time to fill by changing their approach in three areas.

Firstly, it’s critical that organizations better align recruiting resources with business priorities. (Ensuring that recruitment resources support the most important areas of the business, based on a strong understanding of the business strategy and expectations is critical). For instance, if specific business units or divisions are expected to switch into growth mode over the next 6-12 months, recruitment resources should be planned and allocated accordingly.

In this way, the recruitment team can get ahead of the curve by identifying where talent demands will be greatest and ensure that priority is given to critical roles that will have the most impact on business performance.

This requires HR leadership to develop a strong understanding of the links between business strategy, talent strategy and the implications these will have on the demand for recruitment support. (The loss of productivity and engagement with other staff members must also be taken in to account).

Secondly, streamlining hiring workflows results in significant gains in speed, which in turn can save the average many thousands of pesos per hire. Approximately four out of five recruiters struggle to work through additional stakeholders, technologies and regulations adopted to help execute the hiring process. Selection processes often grows organically over time and doesn’t get examined from a more holistic perspective. Organizations can also make significant gains through identifying and removing hidden process inefficiencies to reduce the complexity of the recruiting process. This involves stepping back and really challenging the value of each stage of the process and ensuring that only the critical and most effective elements are retained.

Recruiters at organizations’ with streamlined hiring workflows have nearly half the average time to fill of those with complex hiring workflows.

Finally, hiring managers are taking 44 per cent longer in their decision-making compared to five years ago, particularly where it’s a new position or where new skills are involved for the role. In order to accelerate the hiring process, HR needs to think about how to shift from just giving hiring managers and stakeholders more information, to shaping decision making by limiting and better organizing information and how they engage stakeholders.

This can be as simple as ensuring candidate data is batched and shared with hiring managers in a structured way, to analyzing which stakeholders are critical to decision-making and ensuring that they are involved in the correct stage of the hiring process. For example, it may be more appropriate to involve some stakeholders at the needs analysis stage rather than at the hiring decision stage.