Going Global? Keep Your Workforce Lean

What Is Lean Hiring?

Lean hiring, also known as lean recruitment, is a way for companies to effectively acquire top talent for their firms by simultaneously eliminating waste and boosting efficiency. This is accomplished through identifying wasteful and cumbersome processes within the hiring process and either removing or replacing them. Ultimately, this serves to decrease turnover and establish a format for streamlining the process of recruiting and acquiring human capital.

One of the most obvious and most important benefits of a lean hiring strategy is the time it saves. By having a manageable, replicable process in place, problems and issues no longer bounce around from department to department seeking resolution. Automated processes establish a protocol for a host of potential problems which can then be easily identified and resolved. This can also benefit the experience for your potential hires, as no candidate likes to get lost in the paperwork and bureaucracy of the hiring process. Further, when this happens it can turn away potential key assets for your company and damage the company’s reputation as a mindful, organized entity. In the long run, the efficiency of one department can ultimately increasing a company’s gross productivity, capacity, and profit.

Listed are some best practices for lean hiring.

• Assess work practices: Identify what’s working well and what isn’t.
• Trim down the excess: Outsource, let-go, or eliminate unproductive assets. This can be a difficult stage of the process, but your company and your other workers will benefit in the long run.
• Update and revise operations: Continually assessing, questioning, and streamlining your processes is the best way to remain competitive in the ever-changing corporate arena.

Lean hiring can be especially important, even critical, when branching out internationally. With the difficulties and costs involved in establishing an international venture, it is important to make sure that you keep a small workforce with efficient, dedicated workers committed to the company and the endeavor. For example, in 2015 Target expanded into Canada, opening up 124 stores in the course of ten months. After only two years, Target still could not gain any significant traction and had to pull out to avoid further losses. These kind of failed endeavors can be costly for a company.

Stay Lean Internationally

One of the best ways for a company that’s trying to branch out internationally to keep a lean, minimalistic strategy is by using an International PEO (Professional Employer Organization) service. A PEO will allow your corporation to enter a foreign market with minimal set up and minimal takedown all while remaining fast, focused, fiscally responsible, and compliant. A PEO allows you to skip the process of setting up an official entity in a foreign country and leaves the hiring, payroll, and sometimes the majority of the liability to your PEO servicer.

A PEO can offer you many benefits.

Flexibility

One of the key components of having a lean workforce is the flexibility that it brings; a PEO grants you the freedom to set up in your new country as well as make structural changes to your workforce without incurring legal ramifications and other costly liabilities.

Benefits

A PEO firm can offer the benefits of a more established – high level company such as 401(k) benefits and insurance plans – increasing the appeal of your company and allowing you to attract and recruit top talent.

Behind the Scenes Management

In addition to flexibility and accessibility, a PEO has a host of other services that keeps your business competitive, efficient, and profitable by managing the backend of your foreign operations while handling payroll, staffing, HR, and taxation.