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By Kevin Flemming
Business Journal Columnist
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In our office, the day preceding a holiday is usually reserved for planning. We know that most of our customers won’t be calling for temporary help or to schedule candidate interviews because their offices will be closed the next day. So we take the time to list our activities for the next week and work on our sales & recruiting plans.
Looking at the current economic environment, we can think of this period as a long day before a holiday. For small businesses that have survived the extended downturn, it is a good time to plan for your future recruiting activities. Now is the time to create a strategic staffing plan.
Strategic staffing is an extension of your vision
Although large companies embraced this concept over a decade ago, the practice is not yet common among smaller employers (those companies with 25 to 200 employees). The primary goal of a strategic staffing plan is to create the optimal workforce for a company’s future, while maintaining the specific personnel necessary for running operations in the present. It enables a company to build a “strong bench”.
In reality, most small employers will never see the value of writing a strategic staffing plan. We are too busy running our daily operations, creating selling opportunities and managing existing staffing needs. However, the organizations that will most likely survive and thrive in the future work with a clearly communicated vision. They see changes in the market and have the ability to plan for the next 3-5 years (not just the next 12 months). Developing a strategic staffing plan should be a natural step for these companies.
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So, where does it begin? In the Fortune 500 world, this process generally starts with an analysis of the existing bench. Companies measure their key employees by a set of internal standards to create a baseline view of their workforce. From there, they begin to identify gaps that will need to be filled in the future. After this task is repeated at the departmental levels of the organization, a model of the new workforce appears which is used as a template for future hiring. I summarize this approach by using the following acronym, TUIF that stands for ‘tedious, unnecessary, and irrelevant to the future’.
Companies encourage vision by looking outside, not in. Small companies that want to become larger cannot rely on the make-up of their existing bench to grow because their bench isn’t deep enough. They must make courageous decisions based upon their view of the future to build a scalable business model.
A staffing model for the small company
My strategic staffing model for the small company starts with a simple question: what do you want to be when you grow up? This question initiates the process for creating a practical staffing plan for the future. The following steps will take you through this effective planning technique.
1. Using your existing vision for the future of your market, list the products and services that your company will be selling during the next 3 and 5 years. Be sure to not only identify the product, but how it will be sold and distributed in that future marketplace.
2. Based upon the revenue projected for that 3-5 year period, list all of the operational resources that will most likely grow (i.e. your IT systems, customer service operation, back-office needs).
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3. Now begin some basic estimates. First, determine the number and make-up of people needed to staff your operational resources. If you currently have one bookkeeper handling both AR and AP, will you need to break up that function and add another employee? Look at each operation in the same way.
4. Go back to your first step and determine what types of knowledge and skill sets will be required to develop, sell and deliver the new products. You may not have that kind of talent in-house.
5. Using an Excel spreadsheet, create a model that identifies the number and functions of future employees based upon the 3-5 year timeline. Make it as detailed as possible right down to the titles. Your goal is to create a visual representation of your future organizational chart.
6. This last step will require the most time. With the information acquired in the previous five steps, begin to brainstorm with your key people on how to develop existing employees and attract new hires within the scope of the model. Write a plan in narrative form that describes your future organization and the types of people who work there.
If, at this point, you’re wondering whether this is all worthwhile, consider the following theory: Just three years ago, employers were competing in the tightest, most challenging labor market in U.S. history. Since our economy runs in cycles, that type of market is likely to reappear – one only needs to look at the current healthcare staffing market as an example. Therefore, it makes sense to have a roadmap before we start the next leg of our journey. Have fun creating your future. |
