Compare and contrast workload-driven forecasting and staffing efficiency-driven forecasting

What will be an ideal response?

Workload-driven forecasting uses historical data on the average number of hires typically made per recruiter or the average number of recruits processed per recruiter over a given period of time, say, a week, month, or year. For example, if an organization's average recruiter can process 100 applicants during a recruiting drive, the company will need a staff of 20 recruiters to process 2,000 applicants. Similar procedures can be used to estimate the amount of additional resources, the telephone costs, advertising costs, photocopying, background checks, medical tests, and so forthas needed for the staffing effort. The amount of money that needs to be budgeted for the staffing effort depends not only on the number of people to be hired but whether applicants are local or from far away, the recruiting sources used, the selection methods employed, and the tightness of the labor market.

Staffing efficiency-driven forecasting is another method of forecasting how many recruiters are needed. Staffing efficiency is the total cost associated with the compensation of the newly hired employeesthat is, the total starting base pay of all new employees. For example, if a firm's internal and external staffing costs were $100,000, and 10 people were hired, each with a starting base salary of $60,000, the firm's staffing efficiency would be 100,000/600,000 or 16.67 percent. Lower staffing efficiency percentages reflect greater staffing efficiency. Because the staffing efficiency approach is financially and efficiency driven rather than workload driven, it can be a useful metric for evaluating how well a firm's staffing plans are working. The method can also be used to set a budget for an upcoming hiring effort.