What Retail CEOs Need to Know About Recruiting and Staffing

The right hire can bring a team together, strengthen a division and help the CEO focus on growing the business as opposed to running the business. CEOs have been mostly concerned about how the tough economic conditions are affecting profitability. They're now looking at other issues such as recruiting and staffing to help grow their company as things hopefully continue on an upswing.

A CEO needs to know the big picture of what's going on with recruiting. How many openings does the company have? Is that creating any backlogs in production? What will it cost to fill the positions? A staffing report provides a nice overview without getting into the individual details of each hiring decision or new vacancy. Employ a strategy and reporting mechanism before starting the hiring process.

To calculate costs per hire, divide recruiting and hiring costs by new hires. When calculating recruitment costs, be sure to include recruiting department salaries and overhead, outside recruiting agency payments, advertising costs, hiring bonuses, referral bonuses, relocation costs and bonuses, and any immigration costs.

Finding and hiring the right employees is essential to any business’ success. The wrong hire can be a disaster, resulting in lower team morale and missed objectives. What follows is a checklist for what a CEO needs to know for tracking recruiting and staffing efforts and costs:

• if the company is seen as an employer of choice by potential candidates;
• the big picture of what's going on with recruiting and hiring (e.g., how many openings are available);
• the cost to fill each position;
• what departments need to be filled first — i.e., an established order of priority staffing; and
• that there are metrics in place to decide who can authorize new hires and what the cost is to recruit qualified employees.

To be successful when hiring, CEOs must plan not only for the present but also the future. By employing the strategies suggested above, your cost per hire will be lower than recruiting without a plan and reporting in place. This will help you track positions filled and turnover rates, as well as create strategies to overcome the obstacle of fulfilling difficult-to-fill positions.

In the end, employees obviously play a strategic role in a company’s success and ability to achieve new heights. Always cultivate relationships with talent not yet on the market and implement referral bonuses for employees who bring in excellent candidates.

Johnny Laurent is general manager of Sage Employer Solutions, a company that addresses the challenges of human resource management, including HR, payroll, benefits, employee self-service, attendance, recruiting, training and workforce analytics.