Have you identified what skills your business needs to achieve its goals and created the right jobs?
Efficient and effective recruitment and staffing begins with an analysis of your HR needs. You need a plan to ensure that you are hiring the right people with the right skills at the right time. Developing an HR plan will help you identify the right skills and determine what is the right time to bring those skills on board.
The decisions you make as to whom to hire will affect your ability to meet your objectives. In the long run, it pays to take time to examine your needs and plan your approach in a thorough and methodical way, using all the resources at your disposal. If you don’t take the time to anticipate potential changes in your workforce, you will be coming up with quick fixes in “crisis mode”. You will save time and money in the long run if you take the time to map out your future hiring needs now. You want to make sure that you have created the right positions and are recruiting the right skills before you even start looking for the right person for the job.
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Before you begin to build your team, it is essential to ask yourself questions about your particular situation. You can then begin to prepare a plan to meet your HR needs. Ask yourself a few general questions before you begin:
Here are some resources and tools that will help you in your overall HR planning. We have added some components directly on this website, but for detailed information you may want to explore these:
In order to ensure your plan responds well to changing priorities, it is important for you to look at the overall goals of your organization or business. If you are responsible for a team within a larger organization, ensure that your team goals tie into the overall company objectives. Is there an overall business plan for your organization?
A key first step is to assess the current conditions and future goals of your company on a regular basis. Consider these questions as they apply to your particular business:
Ensure that in answering the question above, you have considered the following:
Most mid- to large sized organizations have a formal strategic plan that addresses the above components and guides them in successfully meeting their missions. Even a small organization with as few as 10 staff can develop a strategic plan to guide decisions about the future.
Here are some resources and tools that will help you in your overall HR planning. We have added some components directly on this website, but for detailed information you may want to explore these:
Based on your business needs and strategy, you may need to fill a vacant position or create a new job. For a vacant position, this is a good time to assess if the job still helps your organization serve its purpose and achieve its mission. Hiring a new employee needs to be rooted in a larger staffing plan that is connected to your organization’s strategic plan.
Here are some key questions to ask:
In answering the above questions, you are starting to link HR management directly to the strategic plan of your organization. Strategic HR planning is also important so that you can start building HR costs into your overall budget – consider the costs of recruitment, training, etc. as an investment in your human capital.
The HR Council identifies four key steps in the strategic HR planning process:
For more detailed information, visit the Strategic HR Planning page of the HR Council’s HR Toolkit.
Here are some resources and tools that will help you in your overall HR planning. We have added some components directly on this website, but for detailed information you may want to explore these:
If you are looking to recruit to meet your HR needs and your organization does not have a job description or if they are out of date, you will need to begin by defining the job and you may want to conduct a job analysis to do so.
The job description will serve as the basis for many components of people management, including recruitment, selection, compensation, performance management, learning and development. You should also remember that if an employee is terminated for poor performance, an accurate, complete and up-to-date job description will help the organization defend its decision.
Job analysis involves collecting information to help you fully understand and describe the duties and responsibilities of a position, including the knowledge, skills and abilities required to do the job. It is key to creating a useful job profile/statement of qualifications and can also assist you in making compensation decisions for new positions.
The types of information collected during job analysis will be specific to each organization. However, HR Council’s HR Toolkit outlines the following as typical kinds of information to be gathered:
This information can be gathered from current incumbents using interviews, questionnaires, observation, and activity logs.
The list of qualifications and competencies developed through job analysis are used to create:
Each position at your organization should have a job profile (or statement of qualifications) based on the job analysis that outlines the job requirements or statement of qualifications. Before you can fill a position, you should ensure that you are familiar with its job profile. If you are creating a new position, you will need to ensure that a job profile is developed for the position.
The job profile should describe the job’s major responsibilities without reference to the qualities of the present incumbent. The profile should be concise, specific, and easily understandable. It should not contain any provisions or wording which could be considered discriminatory on the basis of race, age, sex, marital status, physical disabilities, or any other legally protected characteristic.
The profile should identify the following key components:
Job profiles should be kept up-to-date, in case a position needs to be filled unexpectedly. A good time to review a position’s job profile is during the annual formal performance appraisal exercise or when filling a vacant position.
SaskNetWork recommends that job descriptions include these key components:
You will need to decide what to pay an employee when you are making a new hire, moving or promoting a current employee, or are facing unwanted departures which you believe may be based on compensation.
Having a clear understanding of the duties and responsibilities of the position and the overall role it plays in the organization combined with data on market and sector comparatives are keys to establishing salary.
Establishing a good pay structure contributes to good working conditions, and will help you to retain a satisfied workforce with better performance, as well as to attract new talent. It can help you avoid the following:
More than 20,000 employment standards claims are filed each year. A lawsuit can be expensive and time consuming.
The minimum wage is designed to impose a broad and enforceable standard on employers that would guarantee a minimum level of income for unskilled, non-unionized workers. Minimum wage standards are also designed to stop these workers from trying to undercut each other by agreeing to work for less than someone else.
Minimum wage is the lowest wage rate an employer can pay an employee. Most employees are eligible for minimum wage, whether they are full-time, part-time, casual employees, or are paid an hourly rate, commission, piece rate, flat rate or salary.
In Ontario (as of October 1, 2015):
You want to pay well to both attract and retain employees. Remember to be creative and emphasize other perks in cases where you cannot afford to pay as competitively as you would like.
You should keep in mind that base wage rates and salaries do not tend to fluctuate in response to economic upturns or downturns. It is also good to keep salaries fairly stable to reduce possible tensions between new and existing staff.
Consider the following questions when setting pay rates:
Periodically, you will review your current and future HR needs to see if any new positions are required. If you feel that your current staffing complement is not sufficient and you require another position, you should consider the following components:
SaskNetWork’s HR Guide recommends looking at the costs of hiring, the benefits of hiring, and the risks of not hiring.
If the benefits and risks outweigh the costs, then you have an easy decision to make. If not, then reconsider the hire. You may want to look at ways to develop your existing employees to take on the role in the short and long-term (see Develop Your People). You can also explore which employment relationship would work best in your current situation.
If you are not in a position to hire a permanent employee but do need to increase your human capital, a different kind of employment relationship may fit with your current financial and business situation. Employers can gain flexibility, access to specialized talent and cost savings by exploring these options, as identified by the HR Council:
NOTE: You may want to consult with a lawyer when using a series of fixed term contracts as some such employees can be considered akin to a permanent employee or in any case where you are unsure of your obligations under a given employment relationship.