EOFY Budget Planning: Tips to Maximise Your Recruitment Budget

With many companies feeling the financial pinch these days, the recruitment budget is often one of the first to be tightened. However, without good people at the helm, your business lacks the capacity to function and improve, putting it in a tricky position.

Thankfully, with careful planning, you can stretch your recruitment budget further. And with the end of the financial year (EOFY) approaching, it’s the ideal time to strengthen your case for hiring for those much-needed roles.

Emanate Technology works closely with businesses to ensure their recruitment planning is efficient and future-focused. In this article, we’ll walk through practical ways to maximise your hiring allocation and how to strengthen your case for the talent your business needs to thrive.

Why EOFY is the Best Time to Assess Your Recruitment Budget

In addition to serving as a financial checkpoint for your business, the EOFY is a critical time for organisational planning. More specifically, it’s the ideal time to assess your teams to determine where you’re under-resourced or if a new capability is needed.

In 2024, 28% of employers recruited for new positions, indicating that quality candidates are in high demand. So, pre-planning your recruitment budget for the year ahead is essential for both permanent and temporary staff. Doing it ahead of the new year can save you money and time.

When hiring permanent employees, you want to be sure you’ve secured the right long-term skill sets that align with your business goals and initiatives. Likewise, having the recruitment budget available for temporary and contract staff means you can prepare for busy periods or when project demand spikes, rather than only hiring reactively.

Curious how to maximise your allocation for hiring the right people and roles? With EOFY planning in Australia just around the corner, the time to learn is now.

Common Roadblocks to a Bigger Recruitment Budget

Although a necessity for any business, it can sometimes be a struggle to know how to justify recruitment budget or how to ask for more budget. Even with a valid request, it’s how you present your hiring case that impacts your chance of approval. At Emanate Technology, these are some common missteps we see businesses make.

No Data to Back Up Hiring Requests

Go beyond the fact that you need to fill this role, and provide more information to solidify your case. Why do you need to fill it? What costs does the business incur if it remains unfilled? And what outcomes can this employee help drive? Use data from salary benchmarks, market insights, and internal performance to bolster your case, and let the facts speak for themselves.

Lack of Alignment With the Business’s Goals

Determine the business goals this employee or role will directly contribute to, and mention them in your request. What roles do you need to fill, not want to fill (for example, cyber security jobs)? Be specific, including revenue goals, customer outcomes, or compliance obligations that they can help achieve.

Unclear Role Definition

To the people assessing your request for a bigger recruitment budget, a lack of clarity about the role’s purpose or what it entails is the quickest way to have it denied. Clarify this employee’s responsibilities and daily tasks, as well as the direct achievements they can help the business with.

No Value for Money Proposition

Like any solid business case, you should be able to demonstrate the value for money that this position will deliver. And specifically, why is planning to increase your recruitment budget at EOFY going to save you money down the line?

Underestimating the Value of a Recruitment Partner

Emanate Technology supports our clients by providing labour market insights, candidate profiles, and expert advice that help you demonstrate the true value of a hire. If your goal is to hire efficiently and within budget, we can tailor our approach to suit.

Tips to Stretch Your Hiring Budget Further

As the end of financial year HR planning approaches, you need a strategy in place to optimise your hiring budget. Emanate’s experience in recruiting for the technology sector means we understand the nuances of contract and permanent hiring, including how to stretch your allocation while placing the right people into the right roles.

Here’s how we can help:

• Provide up-to-date salary and market data that informs your budget and helps you plan ahead accurately.
• Help you determine the positions that increase revenue, support innovation, or improve customer outcomes, and focus on hiring for these roles.
• Articulate the business value of each hire, using our expert insights into recruitment and the tech sector.
• Support a flexible workforce, including a balance of permanent and temporary staff, so you’re only employing the roles you need, when you need them.
• Optimise the recruitment process to save your business time, reduce costs, and help you hire the best people for the role. With Australian employment set to increase by over 6% in the next five years, we can help you source those in-demand candidates who tick all your boxes.

EOFY is much more than a tax deadline; it's a chance to plan your workforce, cut costs, and set your team up for a year of success. With a few simple strategies to stretch your recruitment budget further, you'll have all the resources you need to reach your business goals.

Plan on Expanding in the New Financial Year?

Get in touch with the Emanate Technology team today and discover how we can help you plan smarter and hire better.