Even though it can feel tedious, you always need to be aware of your staffing plan and how it needs to be changed to suit how the year progresses. Hiring should not be something you do only when an obvious need arises. Instead, you should continually review where you might require hires later, and in the case of emergency, you’ll be much less likely to face issues.
So how do you ensure that you’re reviewing your staffing plan correctly? How do you make sure you’re using it to the optimum degree for your business? Here are five top tips and questions you should be asking yourself going ahead.
Tip #1: What are your long term goals, and how do they relate to your staffing needs?
Consider where your business is going throughout the next quarter, year, or another specified length of time. Pre-planning your staffing, believe it or not, is an essential part of this. You don’t want just to start the hiring process when the need first gets identified, and you start searching. Look ahead to see what in-house talent you might need, or where you might need to contract out to achieve goals.
Tip #2: How and in what way are your hiring methods going to affect your business?
Better put, you’ve identified your potential need areas. Will you fill them with contractors, temporary employees, or full-time workers? If it’s a job that may open up for a single project, then temp or contract workers are the way ahead. In that situation, hiring then firing a permanent staff member is likely to disrupt the workplace and cause job uncertainty.
Tip #3: What skills do you already have in your employee inventory?
The skills inventory is what talent range you have within your current staff. You need to evaluate each employee and what skills they bring that others do not. As well as assessing gaps yourself, you should talk to your employees – they’re more likely to know day-to-day requirements than you! As well, current staff members may be willing to even eager to take on new skills in new areas. In this way, you may be able to increase productivity and expand your business without ever having to hire another person!
Tip #4: And what skills are you missing?
When you find the gaps mentioned in tip #3, it’s time to figure out what you’re going to do about it. It isn’t always possible to train existing staff in unfamiliar areas, so what kind of new team do you need and where? Should they be multi-skilled or specialized? Will they be an asset to your productivity and the future life of your company? Know which roles and job descriptions you’re looking to create. This process is essential both in terms of efficiency and cost to the business.
Tip #5: Do you have a regularly updated staffing plan?
Using the tips before this, you should be able to plan out the next quarter or even year, even in a time of uncertainty and global panic such as this. Don’t do it once and forget about it. Every time something changes, check back, see what you can do and change. Focus on both short term and long term goals and see how you can best optimize for your business to flourish.