Staffing refers to the process of recruiting, hiring, managing, and retaining employees to fill open positions at an organization. As a talent acquisition process, staffing is centered around understanding people and forming interpersonal connections.
It relies heavily on sales and relationship-building skills to source strong candidates, market openings to passive talent, and convince prospects to consider new roles. Staffing professionals develop strong networks over time by fostering relationships with both candidates they have placed and hiring managers at client organizations.
Keeping the needs and preferences of people, rather than transactions, at the forefront of staffing activities leads to the best outcomes. Whether contracting talent, managing internal mobility, or providing HR services, those who excel in the staffing field do so by focusing on the human element – forging trust, making emotional intelligence a priority in matching talent to teams, and maintaining open communication with all stakeholders involved.
Relationships and an intuition about people are the lifeblood of staffing.
Table of Contents
- What Is Staffing?
- What Is Staffing In Management?
- What Is Staffing Meaning In Business?
- What is Staffing in HR?
- Types of Staffing
- 5 Importance of Staffing
- Objectives of Staffing
- Difference Between Staffing and Recruitment
- Function of Staffing
- Staffing Process
- Staffing Process Flow Chart
What Is Staffing In Management?
Staffing is a key function of management that involves hiring, positioning, and managing employees in an organization. Here are some key points about staffing in management:
- Staffing relates to determining workforce requirements, sourcing suitable candidates, recruiting, selecting, hiring, onboarding, and managing employees to achieve organizational goals.
- It is a core management activity that ensures an organization has the right number of productive and engaged employees with the necessary skills in the appropriate roles at the correct time to carry out business objectives.
- Staffing includes workforce planning, job analysis, job descriptions, sourcing, screening, selection, hiring, orientation, training, evaluation, promotion, retention and exit procedures.
- Managers oversee staffing in their departments based on budget, headcount approval, company staffing strategy and human resource policies.
- It involves collaborating with the HR department on procedures while making key decisions related to building effective teams within departments.
- Effective staffing is crucial for organization success as having the right staff improves productivity, employee engagement and retention while saving costs related to turnover and loss of knowledge.
In essence, staffing in management deals with the people-related functions that allow managers to structure their departments to achieve maximum output. Staffing and team development is a core management responsibility.
What Is Staffing Meaning In Business?
Staffing meaning in business refers to the practice of identifying open positions, determining required qualifications and competencies, recruiting suitable candidates, selecting hires, onboarding new employees, and managing employees to keep the workforce aligned with organizational needs. Some key points regarding the meaning of staffing in a business context:
- It involves strategically planning to acquire and retain enough productive employees based on the work needed to efficiently meet business goals.
- Staffing links an organization’s human resource needs to overall business objectives – it’s about having the right people doing the right jobs at the right time.
- It enables building a motivated, skilled workforce that can achieve superior organizational performance and adapt with business changes or expansions.
- Functions encompass workforce planning, talent acquisition (recruiting/hiring), training, performance management, promotions, transfers, succession planning and offboarding employees.
- Staffing decisions in areas like job design, compensation, diversity hiring and compliance influence cost, productivity, innovation capability and legal risk mitigation.
- Technology plays an increasing role – from job boards to AI – but human judgement remains critical in attracting and securing suitable candidates.
In summary, staffing in business is the set of talent management processes focused on aligning a productive, engaged workforce with the dynamic needs of the organization. It is a strategic human capital function vital for success.
What is Staffing in HR?
Staffing is a core function of human resource management that involves recruiting, selecting, hiring, onboarding, deploying, and managing employees to meet an organization’s business objectives. Here are some key points about staffing in HR:
- The HR staffing process aims to acquire and retain people with the necessary skills, experiences, and competencies to fulfill job roles.
- It involves HR activities like workforce planning, job posting, screening applicants, interviewing, selecting candidates, extending job offers, onboarding new hires, and tracking employees.
- HR staffing includes developing job descriptions, setting hiring criteria, assessing candidates, ensuring legal compliance, and creating orientation programs to successfully integrate new employees.
- HR collaborates with departmental managers to understand staffing needs, while ensuring all activities like sourcing, vetting, hiring and promotions align with labor laws and company policies.
- Technology aids staffing today via platforms for sourcing, applicant tracking, video interviewing, employee management and analytics to improve quality of hires and retention.
- Strategic staffing allows HR to enhance business performance through workforce empowerment, diversity, inclusion, engagement, development and the overall employee experience.
In essence, staffing is the process HR professionals oversee to attract, select, welcome and manage the people an organization needs to execute its business plans and achieve its objectives.
Types of Staffing
Here are the main types of staffing:
- Temporary Staffing – Hiring employees to provide labor services for limited periods as needed to fill short-term business needs. Common temporary staffing includes seasonal workers, maternity leave coverage, etc.
- Permanent Staffing – Filling positions with employees who are brought on board with no predetermined termination date. The goal is to retain and grow permanent staff.
- Contract Staffing – Engaging individuals to work on specific projects for a fixed period as outlined in employment contracts. Common in consulting, construction, IT.
- Recruitment Process Outsourcing – Using an external agency to source, screen and provide candidates to fill positions across various levels, functions and pay scales.
- Executive Search – Specialized recruiters identifying and assessing C-suite and senior leadership talent for management roles. Focuses on strategic hires.
- Contingent Workforce Staffing – Maintaining a flexible supplemental workforce via on-demand hires, independent contractors, freelancers to meet fluctuating demand.
- Internal Staffing – Filling open jobs by transferring and promoting current employees via succession planning, talent mobility, and employee referrals.
- Third Party Staffing – Companies leveraging specialized external staffing firms to handle the process of posting jobs, sourcing, screening, interviewing, background verification, candidate management and shortlisting on their behalf before hiring selections.
- Remote Staffing – Hiring freelancers, independent contractors and full-time remote employees to work from their own locations via networked communication systems. Supports geographic talent diversity.
- Automated Staffing – Empowering managers to directly attract, assess and select candidates that meet their team needs through automated, AI-enabled talent platforms. Streamlines hiring.
- Diversity Staffing – Prioritizing building a diverse workforce across gender, age, culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation and employing underrepresented communities via strategic partnerships and inclusion initiatives in hiring.
- Volume Hiring Staffing – Scaling up hiring numbers in a short timeframe to enable growth plans by adopting high volume recruiting, interviewing, screening and selection methodologies.
- Crisis Response Staffing – Implementing creative solutions to source specialized critical hires in a supply deficit context such as healthcare workers during pandemic impacts on talent availability.
- Referral Staffing – Leveraging employee referral programs to harness social networks and tap into qualified candidates recommended by existing staff members. This allows accessing “passive” candidates not actively job searching.
- Campus Staffing – Building a talent pipeline by specifically recruiting new graduates from educational institutes via campus drives, alumni networks and recommendations from professors.
- Gig Staffing – Maintaining an agile on-demand workforce from the gig economy to carry out modular project-based tasks and provide skills needed for short durations rather than permanent hiring.
- Outsourced Staffing – Delegating screening tasks, tracking applicant status and the entire talent acquisition process to external staffing vendors who charge based on hires provided. Allows focus on core operations.
- Strategic Staffing – Adopting analytics and evidence-based insights to take a strategic, future-focused view to demand planning, capability development and staffing decisions rather than just operational hiring for immediate needs.
- Global Staffing – Identifying talent needs across global locations and effort to source candidates internationally to enable diversity, cultural integration and distributed team capabilities across borders.
- Value-based Staffing – Assessing candidates beyond just job-related skills but also cultural fit, alignment with company values, collaboration ability and other soft skills that impact organization cohesion.
