What is Staffing? Features, Importance, Components

What is Staffing?

Staffing is the process of recruiting, selecting, developing, promoting and compensating employees to perform different jobs for the organisation. Every organisation requires people to perform various roles and responsibilities and staffing helps in finding the right person for the right job.

Staffing is a managerial function that enables the organisation to find out the number and types of people required. Employees are considered as the backbone of an organisation as they help achieve the overall objective of the organisation. The process of staffing is the most fundamental and integral part of Human Resource Management (HRM).

According to Koontz and O’Donnell, The managerial function of staffing involves manuring the organizational structure through proper and effective selection, appraisal and development of personnel to fill the roles designed into the structure.

Under the staffing function, HR professionals conduct activities like attracting and identifying the best candidates, interviewing them and performing reference checks to avoid misrepresentation of the information stated in their resume.

HR professionals also train the existing workforce to fill future job positions. Staffing is a managerial function in which HR professionals also perform employee assessment and appraisal, and fix compensation packages.

Features of Staffing

Following are the features of staffing:

• It is a permanent and continuous management function.
  
  
• It is a complicated process that involves logical thinking, planning and forecasting the human resource requirement of an organisation.
  
  
• It is performed in every organisation.
  
  
• It is performed to fill the current and future job positions.
  
  
• It is the responsibility of HR professionals as well as other managers.

Due to the rapid change in technology, business environment, and growing competition, organisations need to keep themselves updated on the latest technologies and for this, they require efficient and skilful staff.

Importance of Staffing

Let us understand the importance of staffing:

• It helps identify and hire competent personnel for various job positions.
  
  
• It enables an organisation to optimally utilise the potential of its human resources.
  
  
• It determines the development of professionals in every field of organisational activity.
  
  
• It helps give employment opportunities to people and improves their living standards.
  
  
• It develops the competencies of the existing employees through training and development programs.
  
  
• It also helps an organisation face the challenges related to the change in technology and business requirements.
  
  
• It improves the morale of employees and increases the job satisfaction level.
  
  
• It helps in raising employees productivity and improves the profitability of the organisation.

Components of Staffing

Staffing facilitates an organisation to do Human Resource Planning (HRP), job analysis, recruitment and selection, and placement and orientation. Staffing is an ongoing process that has various constituents, such as manpower planning, job analysis, recruitment, selection, placement and orientation, training and development, and performance appraisal.

The different components of staffing are as follows:

• Manpower planning
• Job analysis
• Recruitment and selection
• Placement, induction and orientation
• Training and development
• Compensation
• Performance appraisal
• Career Planning
• Succession Planning

Manpower planning

The process of estimating the number of manpower required by an organisation for performing jobs or work in the future is called manpower planning. It helps in finding out the demand and supply of manpower and enables an organisation to take appropriate steps in case of surplus or deficient manpower. It is the initial step in the process of staffing.

Job analysis

The process through which an organisation is able to collect the information related to job nature, duties, roles and responsibilities, requisite skills and experience required to perform the job is called job analysis. It helps an organisation identify the best talent for a particular job position.

Recruitment and selection

The process of attracting applicants for a particular job position is called recruitment. It is a positive process. The process of choosing the best candidates out of too many applicants is called selection. It is a negative process. For the recruitment process, the HR professional selects different sources of recruiting people like advertisement and campus recruitment.

Placement, induction and orientation

The process in which the selected candidate is placed at a particular job in the organisation is called placement. Induction is the process of introducing a new hire to the existing employees. Orientation helps the new employee get familiar with the job and the workplace.

In the orientation program, the new employee is familiarised with his department, colleagues, and supervisor, and is given the relevant information regarding the breaks, safety precautions, medical and transport facilities, and more.

Training and development

With emerging technology, organisations have to train their employees to increase their competencies to perform a particular job. Training and development program is implemented for employee’s growth which helps in reducing the number of accidents, mistakes and improves the overall productivity of the organisation.

There are two different methods of training, i.e., on-the-job and off-the-job training. Training and development programs also help in enhancing the skills and knowledge of the existing employees.

Compensation

It constitutes the financial and non-financial benefits given to employees in exchange for the work done by them. The compensation is decided according to the nature of work, market rate, employment rule, etc. The compensation forms an important part of the monetary benefits paid to the human resource working in an organisation.

Performance appraisal

It is the process of evaluating employees on the basis of their performance and rewarding and recognising the best performers. The main focus of performance appraisal is to bring improvement in the performance of employees at different levels of management by giving them monetary and non-monetary rewards for the best performance. Performance appraisal helps an organisation in the following manner:

• It encourages teamwork and cooperation.
• It increases employee morale and provides job satisfaction.
• It initiates sincerity, commitment and discipline, thereby decreasing the attrition rate.
• It improves self-confidence.
• It develops problem-solving abilities.
• It increases the level of intelligence.

Career Planning

An individual’s career refers to a sequence of jobs that he does for earning his/her livelihood. Individuals need to do career planning as it encourages them to explore and gather information, set goals, gain competencies, make decisions, and take action. Organisations also play a crucial role in career planning of individuals.

Career planning is a crucial phase of human resource development as it helps employees in framing and working on a strategy that creates work-life balance. In the words of Schermerborn, Hunt, and Osborn, ‘Career planning is a process of systematically matching career goals and individual capabilities with opportunities for their fulfilment’.

The core objectives of career planning are as follows:

• Identify optimistic characteristics of employees
• Develop awareness about the uniqueness of each employee
• Admire the feelings of other employees by giving respect
• Talented employees should be attracted to the organisation
• Team-building skills of employees should be developed by pro- viding training

Succession Planning

An efficient HR planning and management always consider succession planning. Through succession planning, an organisation accepts that the employees will not be working indefinitely in the organisation. So, a plan and process is acknowledged for addressing the changes that take place when employees leave the organisation. Certain positions in every organisation are considered as key positions and are crucial for the organisational process.

The positions are significant due to no replaceability of skills needed, seniority and experience required for the position. So, an organisation should do the nurturing and development of employees within an organisation. The size of the organisation, availability of resources and future needs should be considered while deciding for succession planning.

Employees who are supposed to have relevant skills, knowledge, qualities, experience and desire can be groomed to move up to fill specific, key positions.

While doing succession planning, an organisation should consider the following: 

• Assess the current and future human resource needs based on organisational strategic plans, goals and objectives, or priority programs and projects
  
• Compare the future human resource needs to the capabilities of the existing workforce
  
  
• Frame a plan to fill the gaps that will appear when employees in key positions are promoted or leave the organisation

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