Okay, let’s talk about where we obtain our hiring demand from. If you haven’t guessed it, quite simply, it’s from our hiring managers.
Isn’t it obvious that if you had enough resource in your team you would try and get on the front foot, get in front of them and start asking them what’s happening in their team or function that TA needs to know about. It’s as simple as that.
But we’re not talking about functional leaders, and we’re not talking about HRBPs, we’re specifically talking about line managers. And not just line managers that have recently recruited, I’m talking about every line manager in your organisation. If they have at least one direct report then they might have a need to recruit, whether they have ever recruited before or not.
So the population we need to engage is line managers. That’s where the rich data sits. You might think your HRBPs will be a better source of info, but they’ll be in exactly the same boat as you. Think about the reason that stops you engaging with every line manager. It’s simple maths; there are hundreds of line managers to every one of us. Which makes it impossible to get around them all, especially as we have live vacancies to recruit. Time pressure means we can only focus on the live reqs, and as a result we fall back into reactive mode. HRBPs have the exact same issue in their world. Hundreds of line managers to every one of them. They’re also in reactive mode. So the one thing to remember from this video it’s line managers who are our target audience to engage with, and we need to figure out a way of engaging with them, which we’ll show you in a later video.
As I’ve mentioned, you may also have a people analytics team. They might feel that demand planning is their responsibility. But their data is probably more aligned to historical attrition, headcount, trends etc. If you think that they can provide you with this data set, then you need to ask them. They, much like us, won’t be used to working with this data as they will have never thought to run a bottom-up process. The data they work with is top-down, and in previous videos you’ve seen a top-down approach doesn’t help TA. It’s just numbers, you need granular detail.
At this point you might be worried that you’re creating a process or just another thing for managers to do. More burden on them. But put it this way, if you had 5 minutes with your CEO and said, “I'd like to give my managers a better service and all it will take is 15 minutes of their time every 3 months”, they’d look at you in disbelief that you’re not already doing it. They’d be thinking the Empty Chair Time and in turn a lack of productivity is because you’re not connected to the business units you’re supporting. But good news, if we can fix this and show the impact it has, then the c-suite will be delighted, especially with the productivity increase that you have driven.