How Background Checks Can Impact Your Workforce Planning
Most organizations recognize that their workforce is an essential asset. So why does the workforce planning process remain largely improvisational? Well, there are a few common roadblocks when it comes to strategic HR planning including time allocation, data gathering/security, and skills forecasting.
These barriers may feel more pronounced to organizations that require background checks for the majority of their candidates. However, with the right technology, background checks could actually be a boon to your strategic human resource planning; most organizations don’t know this. That’s why we want to take you through three simple ways to make your workforce planning process better through background check technology.
The key? Looking at workforce planning and background checks holistically, but first, let’s take a moment to really understand workforce planning.
What is workforce planning?
Workforce planning or human resource planning is a strategic approach to hiring where the organizations forecast its worker needs, both in terms of the amount of workforce and the skills required. The organization then takes actions to ensure those needs are met through strategic HR planning.
Why is workforce planning important?
Workforce planning or human resource planning is important because it allows your organization to deliver on business goals. Without a strategic human resource planning process, workforce or skill shortages could cause delays and revenue loss. Poor workforce planning takes a toll on HR and Talent Acquisition departments in particular, as they must pick up the slack and scramble to meet hiring demands on short notice.
How can background checks impact the human resource planning process?
Background checks are intrinsic to many organization’s human resource planning processes, especially in industries like healthcare and transportation where background checks are a legal requirement. Organizations with a high percentage of hires that require background checks will need to consider this layer when they forecast hiring needs and ask questions like, ‘can my background check provider handle the hiring surges of my organization?’
Alongside this challenge, comes opportunity: background check software can be a source of data regarding your hiring trends. This information can inform workforce planning with more accurate employee volume and skill predictions.
What are some common human resource planning steps?
There are a few strategic human resource planning steps that will lay the foundation for any strategic human resource planning process, including…
- Bridge the gap: Now you will want to define the action steps that will propel you from A to B. Depending on what your gap looks like this could include reskilling workers or seeking new sourcing channels to hire outside talent.
3 ways background checks can impact your workforce planning… for the good!
1. Automation & Scalability
Automation and scalability go hand in hand with workforce planning. When your background check system can automate admin tasks and use powerful AI to make sense of disparate data sources then your team can scale their hiring efforts without compliance or candidate experience worries.
That’s why Checkr offers tools like smart adjudication and workflow automation so that you can maximize productivity and plan ahead. Now that you are ready to scale, be sure your background check software won’t hold you back with longer turnaround times in the face of increased candidate volumes. We’re excited to report that our Checkr technology can process over 1.5 million reports a month with no impact on turn-around time.
2. Data
It’s common knowledge that data-driven workforce planning is more efficient, takes fewer resources, and keeps your team motivated with insights. However, securely storing and easily accessing that data can be a hassle. This is where your background check technology fits into your strategic human resources planning.
The Checkr platform secures your data with detailed permission settings, encryption, and network configuration. When you are ready to review the data you’ve stored, reports can be exported with key learnings to quickly scale up or down to meet hiring plans like candidate conversion rate, time to placement, and how well your candidate pool is serving your needs.
3. Integrations
To truly make your background check and workforce planning efforts a holistic strategy, you must be able to integrate your background check software into your ATS. This will ensure your various methods of executing workforce planning flow into a single source of truth.
Checkr’s open APIs are easily configurable for custom solutions, while turnkey integrations for popular ATS and HR technology are also available. A seamless integration translates to a smoother candidate experience, and that’s always a plus.
Closing thoughts: how to begin defining your company’s workforce planning goals
Strategic human resources planning begins with the goals specific to your company. However, sometimes it’s a challenge to define those goals. To start you’ll want to look at the strategic plan for your entire organization to understand the growth targets and compare those targets to your current workforce. The gap between what you have and what you need will give you a good idea of what your goals should be.
