Strategic Staffing: A Comprehensive System for Effective Workforce Planning, Second Edition

Preparing the Right Foundation

Before you even start to define required staffing levels, make sure that your managers and you have a common understanding of what you are actually trying to accomplish. Without such a common perspective, most efforts will fail. Here are some basic elements that should be part of that understanding:

• Clearly define why you are defining staffing requirements. The definition of required staffing levels is a critical, necessary component of any staff or workforce planning process, but it is only a component. It is not the objective. To add value, you can’t simply define what the required staffing levels will be. You must also develop a combination of long-term staffing strategies and shorter-term staffing plans that ...