What information do we want to extract from managers? What information makes up our demand plan?
Well, if you remember from video 1 we talked about what makes up a demand plan. It’s every role broken down into job title, grade, salary, location, reason and when. That’s exactly what we need to ask. Only we need to ask it in a way that’s easy for managers to break down. Keep it very, very simple to start off with. Even a simple demand planning process will turbocharge your team’s performance and credibility. To keep accuracy high, keep the questions simple. So, what are the questions? Well, managers are great at their day job, but they won’t necessarily think of all the reasons that create demand in your team. So, what are the questions to start with? Here they are:
What resignations have you got that you haven’t raised yet?
What maternity and paternity leavers are coming up?
What retirees are in your team?
What internal movers do you have that need backfilling?
Are there any growth/project related roles that are coming up?
That might sound too basic but imagine your entire organisation answering those in a standardised way. It’s extremely powerful.
If that seems simple, then great, because even if we extracted 50% of that demand for these reasons from your managers, you’ll be instantly 50% more proactive to your business and it will be a seismic shift in your delivery. I’ll also explain how, over time, we can increase that 50% to well over 90% like our current customers achieve.
Managers should only focus on their direct reports, meaning they will know this information more than anyone else. So, in simple terms you’ll be asking them “do you have any resignations in your team” for example. If you can extract these simple data points at such a micro level, then picture all of your managers feeding this level of demand into one central place. This is the first stage of obtaining your hiring demand. Here is an example of what some of our customers demand plans look like. As you can see, all the demand from every manager nicely laid out for you to smash your objectives and start delivering the service you know you can.