Hiring planning 2025: "Save yourself time, money, and stress"

A hiring plan is an overview of the need for new personnel for a specific period, often a calendar year. It is aligned with the intended growth or direction of an organization and how that is reflected in the growth (or decline) of certain departments or teams. It is also an excellent way to plan for when colleagues retire or take long-term leave. A hiring plan gives youan overviewand allows you to take the right recruitment actions at the right time.

Something that is often not sufficiently taken into account in hiring plans is staff turnover within an organization. If you have a workforce of 100 people and your turnover is typically 11% (an average percentage in the Netherlands), with a targeted growth of 10% you should not hire 10 new people, but 21. In addition, take into account the aging population and older employees who are retiring (early), and add that to the turnover rate.

Organizations often start recruitment campaigns two to three months before the intended start date of a new colleague. In the case of an unexpected departure, this is often only five weeks. In both cases, this is far too little time to conduct a high-quality recruitment process. It takesfour to fivemonthsbefore someone is fully operational in your organization. Perhaps even six months or longer! We explain this by working backwards:

9. Colleague is operationally deployable
8. Adequate onboarding of colleague (min. 1 month)
7. First working day of new colleague
6. Notice period with previous employer (1 to 2 calendar months)
5. Contract offer and signing
4. Application process (interviews, assessment, and administration: average 4 weeks)
3. Initial contact with candidate (application for vacancy)
2. Distribution of vacancy (average 4-6 weeks)
1. Manifesting brand awareness & employer branding among target group (min. 4 weeks)

What is not included in this calculation is the notification from the department/hiring manager itself that the need has arisen (if this was not anticipated), the writing of the job description, and the engagement of third parties for recruitment (such as recruitment agencies or secondment agencies).

If a new colleague needs to be operational in June, it is therefore better to start preparations in December.

Unfortunately, we are all too familiar with the consequences of not having a good hiring plan. It results in stress, ad hoc changes, playing catch-up, rushed recruitment procedures, and having to resort to expensive agencies.

In practice, it appears that the resulting hires are of lower quality than when there is less pressure on the situation. Theserushed hiresresult in a poorer (cultural) fit, less effective knowledge transfer, more pressure/stress on the current workforce, and thus higher turnover or even more absenteeism. This creates a vicious circle that affects the entire organization.

If you do it right: Higher quality staff and cost savings
By thinking ahead, knowing your turnover, predicting changes, and anticipating them in a timely and adequate manner, you can make huge gains. Both in terms of stress for your current workforce and in terms of costs.

For your position(s), invest more time in the application process to find a truly good fit, and pay more attention to onboarding/knowledge transfer. You may even be able to make internal changes to increase the growth or job satisfaction of current colleagues. This investment will have a positive impact on staff turnover.

In addition, you can keep a larger part of the recruitment process in-house and become less dependent on external recruitment organizations. This saves a lot of money. You can reinvest part of these savings in your organization's employer branding and candidate journey.

A proactive recruitment approach can reduce costs by more than 60%.

There are several points in the hiring process where you can speed things up or gain an advantage. In addition to good hiring planning and oversight, you can continuously focus on brand awareness and employer branding among different talent target groups. This allows you to show your vacancies to a 'warm' target group at the moment they are relevant. You can also build and maintain a talent pool that you can 'pick from' when needed.

A smart ATS can also help you speed up or automate many tasks in the application process. Finally, it is always wise to invest in retention, as this is always much cheaper (and more comfortable) for the entire organization.