How to Set Achievable Staffing Goals in 2025
Growing your business often starts with growing your staff. We’ve seen firsthand how strategic staffing goals can significantly impact a company’s success. Over the years, we’ve helped countless clients create and work toward staffing goals that align with their long-term business objectives.
Whether you’re looking to hire five new full-time employees, tap into freelance talent, or add contract-to-hire positions to your workforce, we know it can feel overwhelming to put together a staffing plan that actually delivers results.
But you don’t have to figure it out alone. Drawing on our experience, we’ve compiled our best tips for aligning your recruitment strategy with your staffing goals so that you can meet your hiring objectives this quarter and beyond.
What Are Staffing Goals and Why Do They Matter?
Staffing goals are more than just a hiring wish list. They are intentional, strategic targets that outline who you need to hire, when you need to hire them, and why they’re critical to your business’s growth. Without them, hiring becomes reactive—fueled by stress, turnover, and urgency. With them, hiring becomes proactive—driven by purpose, timing, and long-term success.
Think of staffing goals as your company’s workforce roadmap. They guide your decisions on how to build and structure your teams based on where you are now and where you want to go. Whether your objective is to scale your operations, break into a new market, or simply improve team efficiency, having clear staffing goals ensures your talent strategy is aligned with your business ambitions.
When you set well-defined staffing goals, you’re not just filling seats. You’re building a team that’s equipped to meet challenges, seize opportunities, and keep your business moving forward—even when the road ahead shifts.
In short, staffing goals matter because people drive progress, and having the right people in the right roles at the right time can make all the difference.
1. Start With Your Overall Business Objectives
The key to strategic workforce planning is aligning your recruitment goals and objectives with those of the whole organization. A misalignment will make it incredibly difficult to achieve your business growth goals in a predictable and timely manner. Why? Your people are the core of your organization. Without enough staff members who possess the right depth and breadth of skills and experience, it is hard enough to complete your current workload and processes, much less work toward future ones.
A great starting point for developing a strategic staffing plan is to reflect on your organization’s business plan. This should include both short-term and long-term goals for the company, such as expanding into a new territory, launching a new product line, or enhancing customer satisfaction scores.
For example, let’s say your number one business goal is to expand your product offerings into a new territory. You will need additional production staff, sales personnel, and customer service specialists to introduce your products to a new market. With them, your product expansion is likely to go smoothly, as you will have sufficient manpower to handle the increased volume.
Common types of staffing goals to consider
Not every staffing goal is about hiring more people. Here are the key types of staffing goals companies should set to stay strategic and agile:
- Headcount goals: Adjust the number of employees based on growth, budget, or demand.
- Skill gap goals: Hire candidates with specific skills or certifications your current team lacks.
- Succession planning goals: Identify and develop internal talent for leadership or critical roles.
- Turnover reduction goals: Focus on hiring high-quality candidates and enhancing employee retention.
- Time-to-fill goals: Accelerate your hiring process to minimize delays and secure top talent.
- Seasonal or project-based goals: Plan ahead for short-term hiring needs tied to peak seasons or specific projects.
2. Perform an Audit of Your Current Workforce
Before you can think about the future of your workforce, you need to understand where it currently stands and what gaps exist between where you are and where you want it to be. Similarly, you can only set achievable staffing goals if you know where that growth is needed.
That is why it is necessary to assess the current state of your staff before determining where it needs to be. Look at the complete picture: what roles are already filled, what current positions are vacant, and what new positions might you need to meet those future business objectives?
To illustrate, let’s revisit our previous expansion example. Suppose you conclude in your workforce audit that your current production team is overstaffed. In that case, consider moving some of those employees to the team handling production for your new territory. On the other hand, if you find you are already understaffed in salespeople, you will know that you need to make new hires in that area before you can successfully expand.
Here are a few questions to consider:
- Are there departments struggling to complete their workload due to understaffing? You need to make new hires there.
- Is a certain team overstaffed? Perhaps you could rearrange team structures to distribute the workload more equally.
- Are there unfilled management roles or other high-level positions? Consider if there are current employees who could be promoted from within or if you need to make those hires externally.
- Additionally, consider succession planning: Are there current high-performing staff members who could be promoted to leadership roles? If they are promoted, will you need to fill their previous position, or can their responsibilities be dispersed to other team members?
It is essential to answer these questions so that you can develop a hiring strategy that enables you to achieve the overall business growth goals you are considering.
3. Forecast Staffing Needs
Armed with a better understanding of your current workforce, it’s time to forecast your future staffing needs.
Begin by defining the factors that influence your staffing needs. Do you need to hire because the company is growing quickly? Are you in a business that frequently makes seasonal hires? Are your staffing needs primarily dictated by client activity and workloads, or by something specific to the company, such as new product releases?
Once you’ve outlined these factors, you can make intelligent predictions about what will happen with them in the next six to twelve months. This will give you a good idea of the roles you’ll need to hire for.
For example, if you’re in a business where staff workloads depend on your list of client accounts and you’re about to land a substantial new client, you have some immediate hiring needs. Or, if a new product release is imminent next quarter, there are likely some roles you should be sourcing for right now.
Next, look at your historical data for clues of what’s to come. Seasonal trends like peak hiring periods and turnover rates for specific roles can inform your approach. You can also factor in historical hiring metrics, such as time to fill, to help you decide when to begin sourcing candidates.
Technology is also an excellent resource for forecasting. Intelligent staffing tools can make highly accurate predictions about the probable number of hires you’ll need to make and can even drill down into the skills you’re most likely to need.
4. Outline S.M.A.R.T. Staffing Goals
Now that you have determined where your workforce currently stands and where you want it to go, it is time to create the hiring goals to help you close any gaps between the two.
For example, if your main goal is expanding your customer service department, how many employees do you need to bring on board to meet the volume of calls you receive? What skills, experience, and personality traits should employees in those roles have? The answers to these questions will help you write the job description for open positions, determine a hiring budget, and prioritize what roles must be filled first.
Setting goals can be an overwhelming process—you don’t want to set an impossible objective and be disappointed when you can’t meet it, but you don’t want to aim too low and remain stagnant, either.
Therefore, we recommend using the S.M.A.R.T. method when setting your recruitment goals and objectives. This memorable acronym and widely used strategy outlines goal-setting criteria to help improve the chances of accomplishing any given business objective. It states you should make goals that are:
Specific
Do not set arbitrary, generic goals—be specific about what you want to accomplish. For example, a goal to improve your customer service is not specific. Instead, set a goal, such as “Hire three customer service specialists with XYZ skills to increase capacity in handling customer service inquiries.”
Measurable
You need to identify the metrics you will use to determine if you are meeting or falling short of your goal. This makes achieving a goal more tangible because it provides a concrete way to measure progress. For example, measuring how you have improved your customer experience would be tough—that could mean anything. The goal of “Increasing the average response score on our annual customer service survey from 7 to 9” is a measurable metric.
Achievable
Your recruitment goals and objectives are designed to inspire and motivate your team to attract successful new employees who align with your business objectives and can help you achieve them. On the other hand, if your hiring goals are so far-fetched that you will never be able to meet them, that inspiration can quickly turn into discouragement. For example, if you currently have a 30-person staff, a goal of hiring 100 new employees in the next six months may not be realistic and is likely not aligned with your capacity needs and budget.
Relevant
This means creating staff growth goals that align with your broader business objectives. For example, if one of your objectives is to reduce the production of an item that is not performing well on the market, it would not make sense to have a goal of hiring additional production staff.
Instead, you may hire additional customer service representatives to handle customer feedback or a higher volume of return requests, or research and development specialists to start brainstorming a new product to replace it.
Timely
Providing a target date for achieving your goals is important because it keeps everyone on track and creates a sense of urgency, but it can do more harm than good if it is unrealistic. For example, people will probably forget about a 10-year goal, but if you expect a huge goal to be met tomorrow, it will create an overwhelming sense of panic amongst your current staff.
We recommend setting check-ins along the way to benchmark success for a six-month goal. You may want to evaluate your progress at two and four months, before conducting a final evaluation at six months.
5. Examples of Achievable Staffing Goals
Here are some examples of staffing goals that meet the SMART criteria we outlined above.
1. Increase new hire retention by 20% in the next 12 months
Not only is this goal specific, but it’s also time-limited, easy to measure, and can positively impact numerous aspects of a company’s operations. Boosting new hire retention reduces the costs that stem from repeat hires, improves ROI on training and development, and prevents team disruption that can be caused by high turnover.
2. Strengthen the company’s artificial intelligence skills
In this case, artificial intelligence is an arbitrary example. It could be replaced with any skill set you’re looking to bolster in your workforce, provided that it supports the organization’s broader goals.
Clearly defining your skill needs aids in hiring because it helps you refine your job descriptions and pinpoint relevant experience when screening applicants. It also helps you prioritize the most beneficial training and development initiatives for existing employees.
3. Improve succession planning by identifying internal talent for key leadership roles
This objective benefits both the company and its employees, which is the best type of staffing goal. By prioritizing succession planning, the company promotes its own future stability and longevity while engaging and retaining top performers and providing an enticing value proposition to prospective applicants.
This goal can be measured with various recruitment metrics, including the number of internal promotions and the long-term retention rate.
6. Get Buy-in on Those Hiring Goals
Once you have set your hiring goals, it can be challenging to implement and carry out a strategic staffing plan if you do not have buy-in from all key decision-makers.
Clearly outline and share your goals, their reasons, and the steps you will take to achieve them. These goals should encompass everyone involved in the hiring process and should be established prior to initiating recruitment efforts, including timelines, budget, the number of new hires you want, and the recruitment process. This will help save you from any confusion or miscommunication later in the process.
7. Start Recruiting
You have reflected on your business objectives, established the hires you need to make to achieve them, and secured buy-in from key decision-makers on those hiring goals. Now, you are ready to go out and actually start filling those positions! How?
Use creative recruitment strategies
Posting a job description and then simply sitting back and waiting for the applicants to roll in is no longer enough to attract top-tier talent in today’s competitive job market.
Turning to more creative recruitment strategies, such as advertising the unique employee perks you offer, showing off your unique company culture to candidates, and hiring for potential over experience, are just some of the ways you can attract highly qualified candidates.
Evaluate and adjust when needed
Using the S.M.A.R.T. goals method makes it easier to conduct strategic workforce planning and set achievable hiring goals. Remember that the business world is constantly evolving due to economic changes and the industry in which you operate. Your recruitment goals and objectives may need to be adjusted along the way or changed altogether.
A solid staff growth plan is all about being proactive. If you are not prepared for change, it is easy to fall back on a reactive approach when something is switched in the middle of your plan, which is often based on emotion rather than what is best for your business.
Therefore, it is crucial to continually assess the state of your competitors, the technology in your industry, and your own business operations to ensure that you are on the right path to achieving your goals. If your goals need revising, don’t fret—go back to step one, reconsider those business goals, and align your updated hiring strategy with any changes.
Turn to professionals for additional support
Suppose you need more time or resources in-house to meet your hiring goals. In that case, if it is taking you too long to find and place the right candidates, or you are experiencing high turnover, it may be time to turn to a professional staffing agency or a headhunter.
Professional recruiters and headhunters can help you overcome your workforce planning issues, so if you are unsure what your strategic staffing plan should be or you are having a hard time sticking to the one you have created, they can help. Whether that means starting from scratch or adjusting the strategy you are currently following, a professional staffing agency can help you form, stick to, and carry out a well-informed and strategic staffing plan.
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8. Tools and Metrics to Track Staffing Goal Progress
Setting staffing goals is only half the equation—the real magic happens when you track your progress and adjust as needed. Without data, it’s impossible to know what’s working, what’s not, and where you should focus your efforts next.
Fortunately, there are numerous tools and metrics that make tracking your staffing goals more efficient and insightful.
Key metrics to monitor:
- Time-to-fill: How many days it takes to fill a role, from job posting to offer acceptance. A long time-to-fill may signal process inefficiencies or a misalignment between your job description and the candidate pool.
- Quality of hire: Measured through performance reviews, manager satisfaction, or retention rates. This tells you whether you’re hiring the right people, not just filling seats.
- Offer acceptance rate: A low acceptance rate can point to issues with compensation, job expectations, or candidate experience.
- New hire retention: Tracking how many new hires stay beyond 90 days or one year helps you evaluate both your hiring and onboarding processes.
- Cost-per-hire: This includes recruiting fees, job ads, and time spent on interviews. Monitoring this helps you stay within budget while evaluating ROI.
Helpful tools to track progress:
- Applicant tracking systems (ATS): Platforms like Greenhouse, Lever, or iCIMS centralize candidate data, making it easy to monitor hiring metrics in real-time.
- HR analytics dashboards: Tools like BambooHR or Workday offer visual dashboards that enable you to identify trends and make data-driven decisions.
- Surveys & feedback tools: Tools like Qualtrics or Culture Amp can help you measure onboarding satisfaction, employee engagement, and insights into employee retention.
- Project management software: Platforms like Asana or Trello can help teams align on staffing initiatives and track progress toward hiring milestones.
Meet Your Staffing Goals With a Partner Who Gets It
Setting staffing goals is one thing—meeting them is another. That’s where we come in.
At 4 Corner Resources, we don’t just help you fill roles. We help you shape a workforce strategy that actually supports your long-term vision. While you stay focused on the big-picture business goals, we handle the day-to-day recruiting work—sourcing, screening, and delivering candidates who align with both your needs and your company culture.
Our team works closely with you to uncover what you truly need, not just the job title, but the talent that drives it. We consider your hiring timeline, team dynamics, and company goals to make placements that last.
If your staffing goals feel like a moving target, or if your internal team is stretched too thin to keep up, let’s talk. We’ll help you build a hiring strategy that’s as forward-thinking as your business.
