Benchmarking Matters

It is a good idea to compare your business or your plans for success with known recruitment benchmarks. HR Magazine published some stats from the Society of Human Resource Management 2016 Human Capital Benchmarking Report that are excellent measures of what employers, candidates and recruiters might experience in the workplace. Items like costs to hire, tenure and span of control were addressed in the report. Here are some numbers to consider:

$4,129…the average cost to hire as listed in this 2016 report. This cost includes the sum of independent agency fees, advertising agency fees, job fairs, online job board fees, employee referrals, travel cost of applicants and staff, relocation costs, recruiter pay and benefits, and talent acquisition system costs, divided by the number of hires. Considering all the items on this list, the benchmark figure is actually quite low. Based on this figure, it is obvious that the majority of hires are happening without the assistance of independent recruiters and that in-house recruiters are producing good return for the investment.

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42 days…the average days to fill a position. This is the time from when the job requisition was opened until the offer was accepted by the candidate. It is counted in calendar days, including weekends and holidays. Many recruitment assignments take far more than 42 days as independent recruiters are being asked to work the more difficult and challenging openings. Therefore, 42 days is just an average.

8 years…is the average employee tenure for companies reporting, and involuntary turnover is listed as 8% per year. The actual turnover rate, including all factors voluntary and involuntary, is 19% on average. That is a significant number of people moving through organizations annually. That says that over a five-year period, for a company with 100 employed at the start of the five years, only 25 of the original 100 would remain at the end of year five. The cost of lost talent, the investments in training and development, are a significant part of operating costs that can at some point disappear from the organization. Cultural fit is worth time spent on the front of a hire to avoid losses down the line.

44% ratio…salaries to overall operating expense. When you add the HR-expense average of 15% to that mix, it is clear that people are more than half of the typical organization’s operating expenses.

There are many great organizations that do benchmarking and make benchmarking available to subscribers. The investment is likely to drive a return! As it is said, “what gets measured gets done” and “anything worth doing, is worth doing right.” If that is the case, then benchmarking can help you be certain you got it as right as it can be!

MORE: Decision Making

Dave Nerz

Dave Nerz
Dave Nerz is the President of NPAworldwide (www.npaworldwide.com or www.npaworldwideworks.com), a global recruiting network. NPAworldwide consists of nearly 500 member firms and 1600 recruiters across 6 continents. Members grow their revenue through splits, expand their industry and geographic capabilities, and offer access to a network of recruiters.

Dave Nerz

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