What Is the Objective of Strategic Staffing?
Let’s start thinking differently about strategic staffing/workforce planning by defining a new, nontraditional objective for the process itself. In many cases, firms think that the objective of strategic staffing is to predict future staffing needs (usually with some degree of certainty) and then define the staffing actions that should be taken in the near term to eliminate problems that may (or may not) occur in the future.
At best, this is difficult to do well (and accurately); at worst, it proves to be an academic exercise that has little impact on the organization. Some companies give up on the process right away because managers lack the skills, understanding, or patience to forecast their long-term staffing needs reliably. In other companies, predictions are made and staffing plans based on those predictions are produced, but the plans are not implemented because the predictions they are based on are not perceived as accurate. Consequently, managers often view these long-term staff planning efforts as something that may be “nice to have,” but not as a required, valued component of the overall business planning process.
Instead of thinking of strategic staffing as a way of predicting future needs and acting in the near term to avoid future problems, think of it as a way of creating a longer-term context (staffing strategy) within which the most effective near-term staffing decisions (staffing plans) can be made right now. Of course, this combination of long-term staffing strategies and short-term staffing plans is intended to allow your organization to address critical staffing issues as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Here is a simple example of how this process works (and why this new definition of process objective is valuable). Suppose you have a job category that is critical to the implementation of a new business strategy. Upon doing an analysis, you determine that by the end of the first year of your plan, you will experience a shortfall in that category of 10 full-time equivalents (FTEs). For the purposes of this example, assume that this gap of 10 FTEs is really going to occur. What staffing actions might you implement to address this need? Is recruiting the “best” answer? Promotion? Redeployment with development? The use of contractors or consultants? Outsourcing of work to eliminate the need for the additional staff? Which of these alternatives is the “right” one? Which would you choose?
Obviously, it would be impossible to choose the most appropriate option by looking only at a short-term need for 10 FTEs. Still, many organizations make all kinds of staffing decisions while looking only at short-term criteria. What is missing from such an approach is any long-term context. Suppose I were to tell you that your workforce plans showed that in that job, you would need 10 FTEs this year, 15 in year 2, 20 in year 3, and 25 in year 4. Armed with these new data, you would probably meet that initial need for 10 FTEs through recruiting, promotion, internal movement, development, or some other more “permanent” solution.
But what if you needed 10 additional FTEs in that job in year 1, were expecting to have 5 too many in year 2, forecast that you would have the “right” number in year 3, and expected to need 3 more in year 4? Given the fluctuation in needs (from gaps to surpluses and back again), it would make no sense at all to hire or promote to fill those openings in year 1. That would meet your needs in the short term, but it would also create even larger surpluses to deal with in future years. Instead, one of the temporary staffing options (such as using contractors) would probably be more appropriate. Temporary solutions such as these are also most appropriate when longer-term plans show that a near-term staffing need is merely a “blip” in the curve. Needs might also be created by scheduling problems, in which case rescheduling of work might be the most appropriate “staffing” option. In both these cases (in this admittedly simple example), we have used a long-term context (i.e., an understanding of what our needs would be in future years) to make an effective decision on how our needs should be met in year 1.
The relationship between long-term staffing strategies and short-term staffing plans is depicted in Figure 2-1. When staffing is done well, organizations will be operating in the shaded part of the diagram, where long-term staffing strategies and short-term staffing plans intersect. Looking at this diagram, we might be tempted to conclude that our objective should be to spread out the stem of the “upside-down T” so that it intersects the entire scope of our organization. After all, if creating this long-term context for short-term decision making is good for some parts of the organization, won’t it be good for all parts of the organization?
Surprisingly, perhaps, the answer to this is a resounding no. Strategic staffing/workforce planning is a powerful process, but it demands lots of time and resources. Therefore, it should be used only to address issues that really require that strategic perspective. As a simple example, the process need not be applied to any job category where the supply of talent (internally or externally) is currently adequate and is expected to remain sufficient over the planning horizon being used. Figure 2-2 depicts the process when it is implemented correctly—strategic where it needs to be (each vertical bar), but not implemented across the entire scope of the organization.
Not only is defining this long-term context a more realistic objective for the process, but this approach might just engage your line managers in the strategic staffing process more than traditional long-range staff forecasting does. The idea of creating a context that allows better decisions to be made immediately might just capture the attention of those line managers who are being measured by and rewarded for achieving near-term objectives. This approach to strategic staffing allows them to manage their own current staff resources most effectively right now. Unlike what happens with the traditional approach, you are not asking them to manage differently (or expend resources) in order to help their successors avoid problems or achieve improved results in the future. Placing the focus on defining effective short-term staffing actions makes it more likely that the line managers making the staffing decisions will still be in place to reap the benefits of those decisions. A more detailed description of what can be done to engage and involve line managers in the strategic staffing/workforce planning process is included in Chapter 14.