Staffing management plans are a necessary component for any service industry role. These plans are worth more than just filling in bodies to complete work shifts. Instead, staffing management plans should be a part of your strategic mission to build and sustain your organization. But where do you start in this process? How can you build a staffing plan that goes beyond the idea of staffing to create a plan to build the business? We have some tips that may help.
What Strategies Fuel Your Staffing Plan?
A staffing plan should serve several purposes:
- Make sure you have the right resources in the right places.
- These resources should be added at the right time.
- The staffing plan should help achieve some long-term business growth strategy.
- It should be as efficient and cost-effective as possible.
Start with some questions as the basis to form your staffing plan:
- What kinds of staff will you need?
- What types of skills should your teams have?
- How long will you need the staff?
- Will these team members supplement your existing full-time workers?
- What kind of training will these workers need?
- If it’s project-based, what is the timeline for the work?
- What is your budget?
- Will you need to plan for succession?
Make sure you build a strong team by starting first with the roles that each team member will play. Give some thought to the dynamics of the team in addition to individual roles. Think about what strengths and weaknesses exist in each individual and how they can complement the team and the work they’re doing together.
What tools can you offer these teams to help them be more productive? Give some consideration, as part of your staffing plan, to the kinds of collaboration tools your teams will need. The point is that your staffing plan should be more than a list of employees but that you should do whatever possible to increase their productivity and make them more successful.
Make your staffing plan more flexible by bringing on a mix of employment types. Consider contract consultants to fill in short-term gaps while building out full-time positions. Can this workforce be remote, or do you have to have them all in one location? Instead of automatically assuming all of the staffing components in your plan are traditional full-time positions, give some thought to contract or other alternative staffing arrangements to help you meet your strategic goals.
One of the alternative arrangements you may want to consider is contract staffing services from an employer of record (EOR) like FoxHire. We can handle the risk and the administrative tasks associated with contract workers for your organization. It’s an unusual approach that you may not have considered, but you should. FoxHire can handle everything from recruiting and hiring to payroll, timesheets, benefits administration, and more. This means that your existing HR team can stay focused on training, promoting, or even recruiting.