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As I’ve tracked thousands of layoffs over the past few years through my layoff tracker, over-hiring has consistently been among the most cited reasons organizations give for workforce reductions, resulting in costly cycles of hiring, layoffs, and rehiring. While better workforce planning can help minimize over-hiring, an equally important and often overlooked practice is to be more intentional about whether vacant roles need to be backfilled. Rather than automatically backfilling, HR and talent acquisition practitioners have an opportunity to help hiring managers reimagine how work is delivered and whether a backfill is the best talent choice, especially at a time when shifts in how work gets done are outpacing most organizations’ ability to respond. To help facilitate these discussions, here is my one-page cheat sheet with eight sample questions designed to spark deeper evaluation and better hiring choices. A few examples: Is this role likely to remain needed in two years, adding a future-oriented perspective to what can otherwise be a reactive decision? Would technology such as AI or process redesign significantly change how this work is done, assessing the risk of role obsolescence before committing to a hire? As a bonus, I am resharing my my cheat sheet to help leaders identify opportunities for delivering work through short-term projects in an internal talent marketplace, tapping into existing workforce capacity while creating growth and development opportunities.
