There are compelling arguments both for recruiting new staff to work in the supply chain and for promoting existing staff! This may seem like sitting on the fence, but in fact what is important is to recruit the right staff for your supply chain. While that may sound like a real cop out, but in fact there is sound sense when it comes to ensuring that sometimes you recruit new staff and sometimes you promote staff from within or even try to persuade staff to move horizontally within the company.

The arguments for recruiting new staff are well known. They are new blood, they can help to bring other experiences and skills into your supply chain. With regard to promoting existing staff, Benefits can range from retaining key employees, company knowledge and to dare I say it saving money on higher salaries of external recruits? Existing staff can be a safe and known pair of hands and there is the signal that internal promotions send out: namely that if you work hard, then you can be promoted.

Where the supply chain is going through change and the existing skill base within the company does not offer the right mix of knowledge and ability its far more common to choose the external recruit option. While this makes sound business sense there can be issues. After all, in this scenario, if you appoint someone who fails to gel within the team then you may well find that the appointment simply leads to further problems.

There can be a danger in many organizations where the HR process acts as a constraint. Artificial constraints such as ‘appointments must be from within’ can severely hamper rapid up-skilling. The right process is to determine the business need then establish the optimum method of recruitment. (in deed in some cases you may decide that while it is best to recruit from an external source – schedule constraints may require an interim assignment from either internal staff or a suitable experienced contractor.)

Obviously, no two appointments within the supply chain will ever be the same. Sometimes you may need someone with strong analytical skills, other times it may be the case that you need someone who is more commercially minded. But whatever happens you can be sure that you need to take the time out to ensure that you get the right person for that position. So it could be someone from the team or it could be someone completely new. But it has to be the right person for each post.

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