Notes on Staffing: Nature, Need and Importance | Organisation

After reading this article you will learn about:- 1. Meaning of Staffing 2. Nature of Staffing 3. Need 4. Importance.

Meaning of Staffing:

After organising the business operations, staffing involves matching the jobs with people. While organising creates jobs, staffing makes people suitable to jobs. Staffing deals with appointing people and placing them at the appropriate jobs. It is “filling, and keeping filled, positions in the organisation structure.”

Staffing is related to performing a set of activities which aim at inviting, selecting, placing and retaining individuals at various jobs to achieve the organisational goals. It involves determining the need for people at various organisational posts, appointing and retaining them at those posts by training and developing their abilities and skills. This is done by performing a number of functions like manpower planning, recruitment, selection, training and development, performance appraisal, compensation and maintenance.

Nature of Staffing:

The following features explain the nature of staffing:

1. Management function:

Staffing is a management function that appoints people at different positions to run the organisation. While organising creates departments and positions, staffing ensures that people with desired skills and abilities occupy these positions to contribute to organisational goals.

2. Pervasive function:

People are the most important asset that convert inputs into outputs. People are appointed at all levels (top, middle, low) in all functional areas (production, finance, marketing, personnel). Staffing ensures that right persons are appointed at the right job so that organisation can efficiently achieve its objectives.

3. Part of human resource management:

Staffing is an important part of human resource management. Human resource management ensures that competent people perform organisational activities. It deals with the set of organisational activities that attract, develop and maintain an effective workforce. The requirements of human resource management are filled through staffing as staffing appoints people at the desired jobs.

4. Deals with active resource:

Staffing deals with the most important resource (people) that converts inactive resources (raw materials) into productive outputs. It deals with the live resource (people) without whom resources would remain as resources only. They will not be converted into outputs.

5. Attached with personnel department:

Functions of staffing; recruitment, selection, training and appraisal of subordinates of all departments (production, marketing etc.) are performed by managers at all levels as all departments need people to function. In performing these functions, managers seek assistance of the personnel department. Personnel department is a service department that assists line managers in performing the staffing function.

6. Continuous function:

Staffing is a continuous managerial function. People keep leaving and joining the organisations. Departments and organisations grow and, therefore, need for people keeps arising. Hiring, training and compensating people (staffing) are, therefore, continuously performed by managers.

Need for Staffing:

Staffing provides manpower to the organisation. In the changing, dynamic environment where organisational size is increasing, technology is developing and human behaviour is becoming complex, staffing function has become important. Need for staffing explains the objectives of staffing.

These objectives are as follows:

1. To achieve organisational objectives by recognising its most valuable resource; work force.

2. To increase loyalty and commitment of workers towards individual and organisational goals.

3. To select people with suitable qualifications to fill organisational posts.

4. To increase skills of people on-the-job by providing training facilities.

5. To develop abilities of the staff to assume jobs of higher skill, competence and responsibility.

6. To establish equitable and adequate compensation for people by providing them monetary and non-monetary incentives. This promotes active contribution to organisational objectives.

7. To reconcile individual, organisational and social interests by maintaining efficient system of communication in the organisation.

8. To provide physical working conditions (lighting, ventilation, recreation facilities etc.) to maintain employees’ commitment to jobs.

9. To maintain record of achievements so that managers can make policies with respect to transfers, promotions and demotions.

10. To make optimum use of human resource to achieve organisational objectives.

11. To make people realise their potential at work and develop them for promotion to higher managerial posts.

12. To maintain an environment of teamwork and innovation.

Importance of Staffing:

Staffing function is important for the following reasons:

1. Emphasis on human element:

Human force is the most important and productive asset of the organisation which carries out the functions and productive activities of various departments. People are the primary source of productivity gains. “If you want productivity and financial reward that goes with it, you must treat your workers as your most important asset.” — Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman

2. Facilitates leadership:

Well conducted staffing function provides leadership facilities so that individuals can satisfy their personal goals along with organisational goals. Employee turnover has become a matter of concern for many companies at higher levels as talented workforce is always on the look-out for better job opportunities. Besides filling the organisational posts, thus, the staffing function also ensures that the posts remain filled. A good leadership role helps in synthesizing individual goals with organisational goals.

3. Facilitates control:

Well trained staff works according to plans and deviations in performance are reduced. This helps managers in controlling various organisational functions.

4. Motivation to work:

Financial rewards do not always motivate the employees. Their acceptance and recognition by managers are also strong forces of motivation. When emphasis is placed on human element in the organisation, people are motivated to contribute to goals of the organisation.

5. Increase in efficiency:

Since staffing helps to place the right person, with the right knowledge, at the right place and the right time to perform the organisational activities, efficiency of the organisation increases. If people are not competent to do their jobs, organisational goals will not be fully achieved. Though people are appointed at specific job positions, there may be changes in their job profile because of changing environmental conditions.

In order to avoid skills obsolescence and, thus, loss to the organisation, there should be continuous training and development programmes to develop skills of the employees. Employees have to be developed for multiple skills and competencies and not specific skills to increase organisational efficiency.

6. Develops potential managers:

Recruiting and selecting people with the best potential, compensating and training them to develop future managers facilitates movement of managerial abilities from lower to higher levels of the organisation.

7. Competitive advantage:

In the era of globalisation, every enterprise faces tough competition from national and international competitors. A well-staffed organisation provides management sound policies and procedures for adapting to the environment and face competition. The fast changing technology can be adopted by organisations only if the manpower is trained to do so.

Contemporary organisations are learning organisation with knowledge-based workers who use information at their work place to meet challenges and risks. They create intangible assets for the organisation and make effective strategic decisions by using their judgement and innovative abilities. They are duty-conscious and a product of vision, farsightedness and intuitive skills.

They even subordinate their self-interest in favour of the larger organisational interest. Knowledge workers create and enhance the competitive advantage by satisfying customers’ needs through organisation’s knowledge base. Staffing function, thus, ensures that organisational leaders align knowledge management with intellectual capital. It combines organisation’s capabilities with needs of the market.