4. reduce over-planning

Over-planning — where you pay for more capacity than you need and end up with workers who aren't required — is a common source of inefficiency. This often occurs during points of low demand in the production cycle, which could be caused by seasonal trends, customer demands or broader economic factors.

Keeping over-planning to a minimum helps you manage costs by only paying for the labor you need. This can be particularly important if your company depends heavily on hiring contingent workers. It also supports productivity by ensuring that the resources you do have are being used as efficiently as possible.

Solutions:

Analyze your workforce capacity utilization to better understand how efficiently your resources are being deployed, how often over-planning occurs and why it occurs.
Look at options for redeployment. Can employees be helpful in other ways at times when they're not required to support production? Can cross-training employees help reduce the number of workers needed to fill each shift?
Work with an HR services firm to study trends in the sector and make informed predictions about fluctuations in activity and demand.
Create a strategy for forecasting the future skills and labor needs of your organization.

5. limit new hiring

Recruiting new staff is often essential. If you're going through a period of rapid growth or entering a new market, for example, you're likely to need more manpower and specialized skills to support your expansion.

But it's also important to consider the cost and hard work involved in bringing in new personnel, from hiring and onboarding to training and on-the-job coaching. If you can take steps to reduce the number of new hires, the benefits can be significant.

Solutions:

Consider how reskilling or upskilling current staff could provide the talent you need without having to hire.
Engage with your most valuable existing workers to ensure they're happy and committed to the company. Offering a pay raise or enhanced benefits to retain high-level talent — as long as this is an option under labor agreements — could prove more financially viable and better for the business than hiring someone new.
Establish a pool of proven, vetted workers who can come in and function at a high level at times of peak demand. This means when you do need to hire staff, you can target people who won't require a lot of support and training.
Develop a comprehensive employee development program so you can help your top workers advance within the company. This step narrows skills gaps within your organization and can increase retention rates.

6. work with a talent company

You may not even realize how much time, money and resources are going to hiring new employees and managing your current and future workforce. Direct costs, such as salaries and benefits, overtime hours and job postings can be easy to track. Indirect costs, such as turnover and productivity loss, may not be as clear, but they can still have a significant impact on your company budget.

Forming a partnership with an HR solutions company is one of the fastest and most effective ways to get your employee costs under control. Paying fees to work with a talent company may seem counterintuitive to your cost-cutting efforts. However, the expertise and advanced services provided by a professional HR service company can actually help your organization realize a cost reduction in its workforce spend.

One of the biggest benefits your organization can gain from working with an HR solutions partner is a significant increase in your quality of hire, which can improve retention and productivity rates.

Dedicated HR service providers specialize in recruiting the right people for specific roles by taking a rigorous and proven approach to candidate screening, analysis and reference checking. At Randstad, this is done by deploying the optimal balance between technology and human touch points. Using innovative HR technology throughout an engaging recruitment process enables our teams to hire for both job, boss and company fit.

Solutions:

The right HR services partner can help you find the best applicants quickly and easily, by providing access to a pool of pre-vetted talent.
An HR solutions partner, such as Randstad, can develop a customized services plan and cost reduction strategy tailored to meet the specific needs of your company. This customization ensures you only pay for the talent recruitment and workforce management services your organization requires.
The services and expertise of an HR solutions partner can help you optimize your flexible hiring and align your talent supply with production cycles. For example, Randstad Inhouse Services can handle the entire contingent workforce management process from end-to-end.
Randstad Inhouse Services specializes in working side-by-side with clients to analyze HR processes and identify opportunities for cost savings. We can work directly with your leadership teams to develop effective cost-cutting strategies.

categories

tags