Part 5 of our Hiring Plan 101 series brings us to the often-tricky world of budgeting. Here’s our brief guide for founders and people leaders to understand the different elements you’ll need to account for in any effective hiring budget.
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Prioritise your roles 🎯
By this point we assume you have identified the different roles you think you’ll need for your team (If not, check out this blog first then come back). Start putting your roles into priority order, based on the criticality of each one against the business’ goals. This way, you can begin to consider how your hiring budget might need to be weighted more heavily toward certain high priority, high impact roles.
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Research salary ranges 💷
Once you have your list of roles, start looking into the salary range for each position to start building a picture of your overall hiring costs. Online resources like Glassdoor or Payscale (or any Talent Partner worth their salt 👀) will give you valuable insight into the average salaries for similar positions in your industry and/or location. Equally, taking a peek at your competitors’ or market peers’ vacancies may give you an even more tailored estimate of how much it’ll cost you to bring onboard the talent you need.
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Benefits & Perks 🤩
Not only are they a first port of call for any candidate checking out your careers page, but the benefits & perks package you offer can also significantly impact your budget, so make sure you factor them in. Whilst these perks won’t cost you anything extra to secure candidates (sign-on bonuses etc. aside), the cost will add up for each candidate once they’re onboard, so consider what monthly or annual allowances (such as health insurance, retirement plans, allowances and paid time off) you’re committing to.
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L&D 🧠
As with benefits & perks, the costs associated with learning & development will continue throughout the tenure of your employees. Depending on your budget and the requirements of the role itself, you’ll need to consider what each role requires in terms of onboarding, ongoing training and professional development for each team member. Once you’ve listed out the primary L&D requirements for each of your roles, you can begin to research the associated delivery costs and identify any leftover budget for spot-training and individual development pathways. It’s also important to note that effective upskilling and internal mobilisation can save you huge amounts of time and money on future hires, simply by producing your own talent internally rather than sourcing ready-made experts from the market.
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Go-to-market options 🔍
Depending on how you’re planning to fill your roles (in-house team, external agency support or an embedded provider), you’ll have associated costs and fees. The cost of each option varies widely as an in-house team, an external agency and an embedded provider are all such distinct services from each other (albeit with the same goal, in most circumstances).
The purpose of this blog is to make you aware of the different cost elements to consider, rather than weigh up their respective merits, but if you feel you need to brush up on your in-house vs. embedded knowledge, check out this blog from Canda.
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Summary 👇
Once you’ve got your financial ducks in a row, it’s important to review your budget regularly and adjust it as needed. As your business – and team – grow and evolve, your hiring needs will change over time; so will your costs. Whether your hiring volumes are up, you need to partner with a new provider or you need to up your investment in your employer brand, your costs will change and therefore your budget should too.
By factoring in the elements above, though, you’ll be off to a great start and can start to see the financial portion of your hiring picture taking shape. Combine this with the rest of our Hiring Plan 101 blog series and, well… the hiring world is your oyster!
Author
Brad Coombes
Leadership
