With changing demography and generational changes in the workforce and with the unemployment rate in Australia at 1.25% in common with many other countries in the world standing at generationally low levels, it is more important than ever that recruitment and retention of employeees is seen as a strategic, board level initiative within organisations. However, most Australian organisations still consider recruitment to be a distress purchase and not something that needs to be planned for or factored into wider business planning.

As such, this report, the third in the Workplace Barometer series asks how equipped HR professionals are to think strategically and manage resources from a risk perspective. Are they focusing upon short term hiring needs rather than planning for talent resources? Are HR Managers too busy fighting fires to work strategically?

Nearly 60% of surveyed organisations had no recruitment strategy and for those that did, in only 28% of cases was the strategy linked to the organisations business plan. Unsurprisingly then, less than half of respondents considered their organisation’s recruitment function to be ‘strategic’ with 49% of respondents scoring their function at less then 5 out of 10.

That said few respondents felt that their lack of a current strategy had a direct negative impact on retention, with most respondents opting for a neutral response.

In a period of the economic cycle where it is proving difficult for many organisations to recruit the right people to meet current and planned demand, compounded by the environmental factors impacting upon all employers, it is concerning that only 31% of organisations have developed a recognised Employment Value Proposition (EVP) and that applicant sourcing still uses traditional rather than innovative solutions as a standard.

This position is compounded further as the technology section planned for in this report had to be dropped as the surveyed respondent’s knowledge of the technology systems they use was too limited to draw meaningful conclusions. This probably means that most organisations do not or are not using technology to underpin the processes, measurement and improvement cycle.

Finally, 70% of organisations did not survey the satisfaction levels of their hiring managers’ post hiring assignment and 68% did not survey the satisfaction of the applicants who had been through the selection process. Australian organisations clearly still have a long way to go when it comes to reviewing the people and recruitment strategies at a strategic level. Organisations must consistently plan recruitment activity based around measureable and accurate historical performance outcomes and forecast business plans for each strategic business unit in their organisation. Until this shift in focus occurs, then recruitment will always be a distress purchase which costs organisations more then it should and leaves many selecting from the best available applicants, rather than simply the best applicants.