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Strategic Staffing
Book

Strategic Staffing

A Practical Toolkit for Workforce Planning

Thomas P. Bechet
AMACOM, 2002
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Human resources strategist Thomas P. Bechet provides a comprehensive guide to planning your staffing. He includes a CD with PowerPoint slide presentations, adaptable Excel spreadsheets, and assessment and evaluation forms. The book has ample examples and case studies of how to set up staffing, and tons of charts, graphs and formulas. But, you cannot apply his models and practices without this detailed hands-on workbook of his scorecard strategy, where you enter relevant data in a matrix that provides staffing direction. Warning: if your basic assumptions are wrong or if your situation changes quickly, you could take a wrong turn, so proceed carefully. While this is not a fun read - in fact, it can seem convoluted - Bechet’s intent is practicality, not recreation. This is a hardcore resource for hiring decision-makers. So getAbstract.com suggests that you pour yourself a stiff cup of coffee, grab a thick notepad and muscle up to the staffing task with serious, strategic intent.

Summary

Using the Strategic Staffing Process

Strategic staffing, or "workforce planning," lets you align your staffing with your business goals, decide what types of employees you need for what jobs, determine costs and measure the results. Essentially, you identify the staffing you need now and in the future to derive:

  1. Staffing strategy - A long-term plan. Indicate what your company will do over a set time period, say two to five years, to assure your staff will match your needs.
  2. Staffing plans - A short-term, tactical plan addressing current staff gaps or surpluses.

Decide how to handle such issues as discrepancies in current staffing, available staffing and projected staff needs. Look for inadequate projected staffing, the gap that occurs when "requirements exceed availability," or excess staffing ("availability exceeds requirements"). To determine if you have this problem, calculate the relationship between supply and demand by defining your staff needs and the availability of personnel very specifically.

Initiating the Strategic Staffing Process

For each of these steps in the staffing process, analyze your current...

About the Author

Thomas P. Bechet, founder of Bechet Consulting LLC, is a specialist in human resources strategies, particularly strategic staffing, workforce planning, executive succession and development planning. He is a former partner in The Walker Group and a managing consultant with Towers Perrin. He teaches in the University of Michigan’s Executive Education Program and served on the board of the Human Resource Planning Society.

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