Developing An Overall Staffing Strategy

Staffing Strategy

In this post, we explore the main factors to consider when developing an overall staffing decision and strategy.

Staffing, decisions are becoming more complicated than they used to be. It requires a lot of thinking on whether you want a contractor or an employee. At the same time, you also need to think about offshore diversity and legal obligations among others. And as soon as an employee is hired, you have to start thinking of morale, retention, training and the likes. Though some companies usually have difficulty in staffing because, they mostly base their staffing decision only what makes sense to a particular team, which is not right when addressing it from the company perspective. This is as a result of the fact that, If everyone makes decisions based on their individual or team needs, the company will end up being inefficient as an organization. Thus, in order to prevent that inefficiency, your company should develop a staffing strategy.

A staffing strategy is established at an organizational level. And its general purpose to provide overall guidance on how you deal with staff on issues such as the types of people you want to hire, how you identify new staff, how you will train or develop them, and how you will retain them. The strategy must reflect current realities, but also set a target on where you want to be in few years to come. To make it a reality, it must be followed and executed on a daily basis. Therefore, staffing strategy facts include the following:

Filling

Staffing process starts with identifying candidates to fill vacancies or openings. Your strategy should provide guidance to managers on how candidates should be identified. This does not necessarily mean new hires. Your strategy should start by describing, how you would like to fill staff openings. For instance, you may request that all openings be posted internally before a manager looks for outside candidates. If your fore choice is to replace openings internally, there should be flexibility in respect to employee transfers.

Unified Goals

Organizational goals and strategy must be unified. Staffing strategy does not exist in isolation. It is one part of what is required to achieve your organizational goals and strategies thereby fulfilling your organization’s mission. For example, if you have an organizational strategy to outsource no vital operation, your staffing strategy must reflect it.

Retention

Explain your overall retention strategy. This includes the levels of turnover you are ready to accept and the lengths that you will go to retain staff. For example, will you consider counteroffer for your best employees if they decide to resign? Discuss how much management time should be spent on trying to ensure that your staffs are motivated, challenged and excited about their job.

By adhering to these few staffing strategy ensuring that everyone is moving in the same mindset, your organization will be effective and efficient.