What are the roles of staffing?

What is staffing, and what are the roles of staffing? We’ll aim to answer both of these questions, along with some of the other key concerns you may have surrounding this topic. Staffing is something that all human resource managers need to be aware of, so let’s dive in and see what it’s all about.

The 6 functions of staffing are as follows:
1. The main role of staffing is to find the right candidates for the right jobs within an organization.
2. The staffing process is designed to bring more productivity to a small business by hiring the most competent personnel for every role.
3. A key staffing function is to get the most out of human resources and make it as optimized as possible.
4. The ability to obtain qualified personnel helps to improve job satisfaction amongst the human capital in an organization. In other words, one of the main staffing functions is to make employees happy.
5. Staffing works to promote better utilization of human resources within a business.
6. The final staffing function is to help organizations grow and improve as a collective through the development of human resource managers.

There are five different principles of staffing that intend to help human resource managers find the ideal candidates for every open role in the organization. This helps a company find competent staff that leads to high productivity levels.
The five principles are as follows:
1. Principle of job definition – each job must be clearly defined based on functions, pay, status, etc.
2. Principle of managerial appraisal – performances are appraised relating to pre-set targets and results.
3. Principle of open competition – there should be competition for roles, allowing the best candidates to be found.
4. Principle of training objectives – clear training objectives should be set, meaning better training can be provided to maintain competence and productivity.
5. Principle of continuing development – training and development must be a continuous process.

The roles of staffing are directly related to the overall staffing process. Effectively, the key role of staffing is for the human resources team to get new staff that meets the needs of a company.
Alongside this, the staffing process looks at ensuring these new individuals transition smoothly into the organization. There should be limited downtime when staffing changes are made. The human resource department needs to identify candidates that can seamlessly slip into the organization without the need for additional training. They should already possess the skills required for the specific job, ensuring that productivity levels remain high.
Another critical role of staffing looks at employees leaving an organization. Here, the staffing process focuses on why an employee might choose to leave. It’s common to hold exit interviews to understand why someone is moving on, allowing the human resources team to spot any trends. This can be used to improve the efficient management of a team, understanding what needs to be done to prevent them from leaving. Thus, maximum productivity can be reached with minimal turnover rates.

Staffing in HR is everything to do with employee recruitment. Specifically, it looks at the functions of employee recruitment – such as screening potential candidates and selecting those that are best suited to the organizational objectives of a company. Naturally, this is all done with an eye on human resources. Here, staffing is used to obtain the right individuals to fulfill roles within an HR department.

Primarily, the nature of staffing is to place competent personnel in the right jobs. It is a core element of human resource management that cannot be overlooked. There are also three key things that come together to perfectly describe the nature of staffing: it should be people-centered, every HR manager should be equipped to handle it, and it is a continuous function.

In management, staffing takes on a more specific meaning. Simply put, it’s the process of recruiting employees to suit the roles of management in an organization. Unlike the traditional staffing functions, staffing in management looks at internal hiring. The HR team will look at existing employees and see which ones are the most suitable for promotions to management roles based on experience, skills, etc.

Human resources are typically responsible for staffing at all levels of an organization. This is largely viewed as a key function of the HR department within a business. At the same time, staffing agencies do exist to help companies with the staffing process. Typically, staffing agencies are HR experts and specialists that specifically focus on all elements of recruitment. They can be outsourced to assist an organization when onboarding new staff by providing interviews, screening, and even training.