Imagup General Magazine 2024
According to a recent study conducted in the U.S,
“Hundreds of employees are hired or terminated every day.”
During the pandemic, the numbers skyrocketed significantly as businesses experienced massive disruptions in the labor market. The abrupt slowdown of the global economy also has led to unprecedented mass layoffs and reshaped workforce management in many ways.
But now, as the impact of the COVID-19 crisis has loosened its grip, businesses worldwide strive to hire and retain top talent. They can maintain profitability and competitive edge by implementing advanced resource management software. It helps to reduce hiring/firing frequency and improve overall business efficiency.
This article highlights how value-driven resource management software can help you minimize hiring/firing cycles in the organization. But first, let’s understand how it jeopardizes business.
Negative effects of frequent hiring & firing cycle on business
Frequent hiring/firing cycles can adversely affect the firm’s reputation in the job market, making it extremely challenging to acquire and retain top talent. It usually happens when companies hire more resources than needed due to inaccurate resource planning and estimation.
This also poses serious financial risks as the firms have to resort to last-minute hiring of high-cost resources that are eventually terminated. This escalates the overhead costs and negatively impacts the firm’s bottom line. In addition, firms spend a considerable portion of their revenue on recruiting, onboarding, and training the employees, which goes wasted once they dismiss them.
Moreover, frequent hiring/firing or layoffs can cause lower morale among the existing employees resulting in unplanned attrition. For instance, if a marketing team of seven members is unexpectedly reduced to four due to the sudden termination of employees. This will hamper the progress of current initiatives, and eventually, the existing team members will show a dip in their performance and engagement, ultimately leading to voluntary turnover. All of this will negatively impact the workplace environment. It will also affect the quality of deliverables, resulting in customer dissatisfaction and loss of business.
Now let’s understand how resource management solutions can help mitigate the adverse effects of hiring/firing cycles on business.
How does resource management benefit in reducing the hiring/firing cycle?
Here’s how Saviom’s robust resource management software benefits companies in minimizing the hiring/firing cycle rate:
1. Provides foresight into capacity vs. demand gap in advance
Forecasting capabilities of the software help in planning pipeline projects and estimating skill demands. It allows managers to identify resource shortfalls/excesses by analyzing the resource demand against available capacity. Accordingly, they can formulate an action plan to bridge the gap proactively. This helps managers fulfill the needs by identifying and deploying best-fit resources before the project’s onset.
For instance, if there is a shortfall of resources, managers can hire permanent or contingent resources considering the project’s timeline or select a bench resource. They can also initiate training for existing employees to meet the skill requirements. Whereas for excess resources, managers can bring forward future work, adjust the start and end timelines of the project, and sell excess capacity to partner firms.
2. Build a balanced pool of permanent & contingent resources
Forming the right mix of highly skilled permanent and contingent workers based on short-term and long-term business demands can help manage work operations effectively. This further reduces bench time, minimizes resourcing costs, and significantly reduces hiring/firing cycles.
Using resource management software, managers can analyze the project requirements if it is a recurring or one-time demand. Based on this, they can form the most profitable and balanced pool of permanent and on-demand resources. This will eliminate unnecessary hiring & firing and, at the same time, reduce overhead costs in a project.
3. Foster shared service model across matrix boundaries
A lack of visibility of resources and their skillset within the company can result in the hiring of similar skilled resources that are already available in the organization. Therefore, following a shared service model across matrix boundaries will help control overhead costs effectively.
An enterprise-level resource management solution with its 360- degree visibility can provide information on all resource attributes such as competency, role, experience, location, availability, cost rate, etc. This will help schedule low-cost resources, streamline work operations, and foster a shared services model. Thus, leaving no room for any hiring/firing practices.
4. Facilitate proactive bench management activities
The effective forecasting feature of the tool gives insights into the ramp-down activities in various projects. It also provides information about future opportunities and shows project vacancy reports that help managers book these resources to appropriate billable work in advance. This will help in reducing the resource’s idle time between projects significantly.
Also, suppose managers find out that the resource’s skills do not align with any project vacancies or pipeline project requirements. In that case, they can initiate reskilling, shadowing, and on-the-job training activities. This will keep them engaged and reduce unplanned hiring firing cycles.
5. Streamline training and upskilling programs
Instead of resorting to bulk-firing when workforce skills become obsolete, companies must invest in training and development activities to future-ready the workforce for pipeline requirements.
Managers can look into the resource pool and identify the skill gaps ahead of the curve. Accordingly, they can plan learning and upskilling activities to retain the employees. This will promote resources to work on different projects, enhance their current work performance and advance their career.
Using configurable resource management software, managers can schedule the training slots and manage training courses effectively. This will eliminate the need for last-minute hiring of a high-cost resource or reduce the chances of firing due to skill obsolescence.
Conclusion
During this post-covid work transition period, companies must make sure that they manage the workforce intelligently. They can adopt a robust resource management tool and follow the strategies mentioned above to reduce the hiring/firing cycle. This will limit the negative impact, help create the right resource mix and gain business profitability, sustainability, and a competitive edge.
