The HR Industry Benchmark Survey, of 1,500 Australian and New Zealand HR professionals, has been conducted annually for the last three years and gives an insight into the core challenges, priorities and opportunities for HR professionals in the year ahead.
The increase in hiring employees has been attributed to the escalating importance of mid-level managers through the pandemic raising the cost of hiring people in middle-management positions.
The data follows ELMO’s Employee Sentiment Index last month that revealed that 43 per cent of workers in Australia and New Zealand are planning to actively search for new work opportunities in 2022.
“After two years of ups and downs, employers may have been hoping for some semblance of stability in the year ahead. Unfortunately, they are going to face some significant cost increases as the cost of the war for talent looks like it will be paid by businesses,” Elmo Software chief executive David Lessem said.
“Having a clear dollar amount for the cost to hire new people may just be the reminder some organisations need to prioritise their people.
“It will be hard enough for organisations to try to recruit talented people to fill the roles that have originated due to growth of the business, let alone trying to replace departing employees.”
As HR professionals navigate “the war on talent”, the survey data revealed that one in four (24 per cent) of survey respondents said their top challenge in 2022 would be recruitment.
“This isn’t surprising,” said AHRI CEO Sarah McCann-Bartlett, “with anticipated higher turnover, increased hiring intentions and skills shortages all coming to the fore at the same time.”
In addition to the rising cost, the time it takes to recruit candidates has also increased. In Australia it takes on average, 40 days to fill a vacant position, up 33.4 per cent last year.
However, there is some good news that has come from the report in that hiring intentions of businesses in 2022 are beginning to look a lot more like pre-COVID hiring patterns – 54 per cent of survey respondents said they were planning on growing their workforce during 2022.
Businesses with less than 200 employees are anticipating the largest workforce growth at 26 per cent, followed closely by enterprise size (+2,000 employees) on 24 per cent. Mid-market organisations (200-1,999 employees) only expected a growth rate of 17 per cent.
