What is Staffing?

Staffing means assigning employees to different positions and tasks. In the HR world, staffing is how the manager allows each employee to work on other projects, countries, or departments. For instance, you can assign employees to work in a call center, back office, or in-house positions according to their expertise and skills. The goal of staffing is to ensure that every project has the right team of workers and that each staff member is doing their job well.

What does staffing mean in management?

Staffing in management encompasses all measures and activities undertaken to hire people for a particular job or project and fill the required open positions. Staffing involves:

• Attracting suitable candidates
• Evaluating and recruiting them
• Understanding their skills and experience
• Retaining them

Well-planned staffing requires coordinated efforts from public relations employees, human resources professionals, and managers.

Types of Staffing

There are three main types of staffing:

Short-term or contract employment:

This type of staffing is used when new employees with specific skills are required for a particular project. Companies also use short-term staffing to expedite sudden surges in workload. These contract employees are generally hired for short terms (rarely exceeding two years) but their contract can also be renewed based on their performance.

Contract-to-hire staffing:

This type of staffing is used to hire qualified people for open positions by assessing their performance for a particular period and hiring them as full-time employees after successful assessment if all goes well.

Direct placement hiring:

This type of staffing is used to hire traditional full-time employees for open positions in an organization. Businesses usually align their long-term goals with hiring need when hiring fulltime employees though direct placement staffing

Importance of Proper Staffing

Staffing is an essential managerial operation as recruiting employees by evaluating their skills and knowledge before hiring them for specific roles is essential for a business’ operations. Well-thought-out staffing strategies can be beneficial in terms of:

Finding quality talent

Since staffing efforts require companies to understand their direct organizational needs first, hiring efforts are tempered according to company needs. From promoting jobs to evaluating potential candidates, everything is done according to a specific set of needs in mind. That’s why finding quality hires becomes much easier as hiring teams know exactly what they should look for in a candidate.

Enhancing productivity

When companies have skilled employees delegated to perform tasks they excel at, it improves the quality and efficiency of day-to-day operations.

Boosting job satisfaction

With organized teams performing a specific set of functions, workload is distributed optimally. Thus, employees can contribute efficently without being stressed or having to work their way around things they do not understand. This adds to their job satisfaction.

Utilizing resources optimally

Staffing efforts form the basis of a well-planned workforce. When skilled professionals handle tasks, they’re well-versed in, it reduces the chances of underutilizing any resources.

Promoting a growth driven work environment

Being part of a skilled workforce that can adapt to different needs, individual employees would be motivated to act on consistently upskilling themselves. This contributes to a company culture that focuses on professional growth.

Steps in the Staffing Process

There are 10 essential steps to the staffing process. They include:

1. Workforce planning: Companies determine their staffing needs based on their organizational requirements.
2. Candidate sourcing: Job postings are posted on platforms to attract qualified candidates.
3. Evaluation and selection: Potential candidates are assessed on the basis of their skills and experience.
4. Placement: Candidates who qualified the selection process are onboarded onto the company.
5. Training: New hires are trained and familiarized with the company’s objectives.
6. Performance evaluation: Employee performance is analyzed based on their skills and the outcomes of their efforts.
7. Development: Employees are encouraged to upskill and pursue further professional development.
8. Appraisal: Employees are encouraged to stay loyal to the company through raises, incentives and bonuses.
9. Promotion: Promising employees are moved up the hierarchy into positions with greater scope of exercising their knowledge and skills.
10. Transfer: Employees are transferred to a different unit that calls for their expertise.