Hiring is an investment – protect it, then grow it.

Written By Anwen Bottois

Let’s start at the beginning, why is this an investment?

You’ll have heard it before, “what’s your cost per hire?”

Hiring costs can be wide-ranging and high, depending on the type of talent required by your organisation and how regularly you are hiring or replacing.

But when you are recruiting are you just looking at a financial cost or an essential investment for your organisation?

When we are hiring talent for our organisations, we are generally looking to recruit someone who is going to make a difference. 

They are hired to achieve benefits for the organisation, whether it’s a direct impact on the bottom line through sales or impacting the employee experience and overall performance of your organisation in a leadership capacity.

They will become part of your organisation to return a result, in some way, and therefore, anything you do in time, resources or money is an investment in your talent.

Capturing all the costs of talent acquisition will enable you to clearly identify the baseline of your investment, which will be critical to your business case to protect and grow your overall investment.

Understanding your investment.

There is no magic percentage you can apply to a basic salary per vacancy. You will be able to find potential percentages if you research it but, you are best working this out directly for your organisation and the type of talent you need to acquire.

Each talent acquisition activity will be different, unless you are recruiting very similar roles, with the same process and people involved each time, which will make things simpler. If this is not the case for you, and most of your acquisition activity is unique or not repeated regularly then you need to identify your own method of understanding your investment per hire.

Considering the typical costs to hire, you can then build on this based on your requirements.  I’d recommend you put a time and financial cost into each one:

  • Pre-advertising activities – preparing job profiles and copy for adverts.

  • Advertising or contracting external talent or headhunting services.

  • For internal talent acquisition teams, there will be the time and effort of sourcing and pre-screening. 

  • With internal or external sourcing there will be the need to shortlist.

  • Coordinating the selection processes including any additional costs for diagnostics, travel, venues etc.

  • Hiring managers and other colleagues involved in shortlisting and the selection processes.

  • Handling the negotiation and offer phase – this may also mean additional costs to get an offer accepted, due to market conditions.

  • Arranging contracts and other offer-related activities.

  • The costs associated with preparing for a new starter – arranging for kit, equipment etc.

  • Anything associated with moving your new starter from appointment to being fully integrated into their role (which can take 6-12 months or more).

Now pull all these costs together, this is your investment.

It may not be 100% accurate (for now), but as you do this more, you’ll get a clearer and truer picture of your investment per talent acquisition.

Having clarity will be crucial to making the case for how you first protect and then grow your investment.

Protecting your investment.

This is about maintaining something, not allowing it to become damaged or lost. It’s important when you are investing in people for your organisation.  You want them to match the quality you need, and you want them to stay.

Here are a few ways to protect your investment:

  • Be clear and honest about the purpose and requirements of the role and your Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Don’t overpromise through the talent acquisition process. This is essential when you consider 33% of new hires are looking for a new job within their first 6 months* and one of the primary reasons for this is they didn’t feel the right job was right for them.

  • Develop a great talent attraction and acquisition experience. This is about attracting and maintaining the interest of great candidates so they want to accept your offer. Organisations that invest in a strong candidate experience improve the quality of their new hires by 70%*.

  • Hire the right person! Make sure your hiring decisions are based on what is needed for the role and your organisation. Be open to those from diverse backgrounds and those coming from different sectors or ideal experience levels. With development and support, a person with the right capacity, mindset and behaviours will be a better investment than someone who ‘ticks all the boxes’ but is inflexible and unwilling to grow or incapable of leading effectively. You are not protecting your investment if you are hiring people who will cause damage or hold you back. When you consider the OECD estimate poor management performance is costing UK employers, £84b a year, it’s worth getting it right.

  • Brilliant onboarding is essential. When you consider organisations with a strong onboarding experience tincrease their retention by 82% and improve productivity by 70% then this is a must for protecting your investment. I’ve created a FREE Guide to Brilliant Onboarding, and you can access this through a previous post Top 5 Tips for Brilliant Onboarding.

  • Continue to review the market rates.  Don’t risk losing this great investment because you aren’t keeping track of the market.  You might be doing all the right things to keep them engaged and loyal but lose them because their package doesn’t match their value.

If you start with these 5 areas, you will be protecting the investments you make in talent acquisition. Protecting your investment may be enough but there are much greater benefits to your organisation if your initial investment can be grown.

How to grow your talent acquisition investment.

This is about taking the investment further; it’s about gaining long-term value. You’ve already done what you need to do to protect your new hire; you’ve sold the role right; they had a great experience up to acceptance and they’ve had brilliant onboarding. Now what?

Let’s take an example of a Head of Department. Growing your investment looks like this:

  • Not only is the team they lead meeting their goals, but they are going beyond what’s expected.

  • All employee experience metrics within the team continue to improve.

  • They continue to grow, are seen as a role model and have a prepared successor for the next level.

  • With this, they have prepared people within their team to replace them.

  • If they leave, they are an advocate for your organisation and the experience you created.

Here are a few ways to grow your investment:

  • Make sure your onboarding experience reflects the role – as this is a leadership role, I can help you with Boost. Boost is a personalised 1-year experience designed to accelerate your leaders to success. You know already how important onboarding is to protect your investment and a more personalised approach will enhance their experience further.

  • Continued development and support – internally and externally. By actively enabling the development of your new hire they feel better supported and invested in. This increases the chances of them staying with you but it also recognises the importance of and requirement for continued professional growth. Mentoring, coaching and continual learning are all essential for this.

  • Active talent conversations. Ensure the leader of your new hire can have brilliant conversations with them, regularly, promoting feedback and a focus on well-being and development. When you consider the impact of the line manager is so important for retention, engagement and performance looking at the capacity and capability of those already present in your organisation is key.

Protecting and growing the investments you are making in talent acquisition starts by recognising what your actual investment is, you need to understand it and quantify it.

By having this understanding and recognition, you can then plan for securing and growing your investment, for this initial hiring point and beyond.

To learn more about how I can support you to protect and grow your talent acquisition investment contact me via a DM on LinkedIn or email me at anwen@purpleskyconsulting.co.uk.

Anwen Bottois
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