- Human Resources
- Talent Acquisition
Strategic staffing: what is it, and how can it improve business functions?
By Paul Peters,May 7, 2024
Paul Peters is the Chief Editor of Betterteam. He's a former print journalist and small business owner and has written articles for a variety of newspapers, magazines and websites.
Strategic staffing is a human resource strategy designed to ensure an organization has the workforce it needs to meet both current and future business objectives. Essentially, strategic staffing ensures you have the right number of permanent and temporary employees for your business to run efficiently.
How Strategic Staffing Works:
The planned expansion and organic growth of a business rely on the efficiency of strategic staffing. Once business leaders have mapped out the planned growth for the coming months and years, they can determine the number of employees and skills needed to complete their objectives.
HR teams map this information against current staff profiles, identifying gaps so that when the time comes to expand, there is enough appropriately skilled staff to meet the demands of the business. This may mean reviewing and adjusting the mix of permanent, freelance, and contract employees, as well as retraining and upskilling current employees. Notable gaps can then be filled with the recruitment of new employees.
The Benefits of Strategic Staffing:
Easily address HR concerns.
Strategic staffing creates a more organized company structure. This, in turn, makes it easier for the human resources department to identify and resolve any problems that may occur.
Maximize staff utilization.
Companies that do not apply strategic staffing strategies tend to overhire employees. This results in wasted resources and redundancy in job functions. With strategic staffing, a company can maximize employee efficiency, creating more specialized roles.
Plan for future staffing needs.
With a strategic staffing plan in place, HR teams can proactively hire and train new employees to meet the future needs of the business. When production increases, skilled staff is already available to meet the new demands.
How to Staff Strategically:
$0.00 USD
2 Months
A step-by-step guide to strategic staffing.
1.
Start with understanding your company's needs and capabilities.
1.1
Start by understanding your financial capabilities.
Considering the company's financial capabilities, decisions should be made on whether a position should be added, removed, or combined with another position.
1.2
Identify the positions your company needs.
What positions are needed to meet current objectives? What positions are likely to become important to the company in the future?
2.
Mobilize your HR team.
2.1
Begin recruiting the right people for these positions.
Once key positions have been identified, the HR team must scout and recruit the right people to fill these positions. If the budget allows, highly qualified candidates can be hired to take on these roles.
Where the budget is limited, it may be possible to hire underdeveloped candidates that can be trained on the job.
3.
Invest in training and development.
3.1
Train new hires.
Once an employee is hired, they need to undergo development training. Even highly qualified candidates must undergo some form of training to fully understand the requirements of the position and to align themselves with the vision of the company.
4.
Focus on employee retention.
4.1
Put an employee retention strategy in place.
A key part of strategic staffing is taking care of the talent that has been recruited and developed. Employee retention plays a big role in making a company successful. If there is a high staff turnover, resources are wasted on training and development.
Employee Retention Strategies
Six employee retention strategies to help create a sustainable work environment.
FAQs:
What is meant by strategic staffing?
Strategic staffing is a strategy designed to ensure an organization has the right number of skilled employees to meet both current and future business needs.
Why is strategic staffing important?
Strategic staffing streamlines staffing and maximizes productivity. It also ensures that businesses have the staff available to grow.
What are the benefits of strategic staffing?
- Businesses can easily identify HR concerns.
- It maximizes staff utilization.
- It allows businesses to plan for future staffing needs.
Who is responsible for implementing strategic staffing?
The human resources department is responsible for developing and implementing a strategic staffing plan.
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