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Strategic Staffing Third Edition

Chapter 1

Strategic Staffing

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

• Understand why staffing is critical to an organization’s

performance

• Define strategic staffing and contrast it with less strategic

views of staffing

• Describe the seven components of strategic staffing

• Understand staffing goals

• Describe how staffing influences and is affected by the

other functional areas of human resource management

Staffing for Competitive Advantage

A competitive advantage is something that a company can

do differently from its competitors allowing it to perform better,

survive, and succeed in its industry.

Every company’s employees create, enhance, or implement

the company’s competitive advantage.

Where do these employees come from?

• It all begins with the staffing process.

Why Is Staffing Important?

Staffing outcomes determine who will work for and represent

the firm, and what its employees will be willing and able to

do.

Staffing influences the success of future training,

performance management, and compensation programs, as

well as the organization’s ability to execute its business

strategy.

What Is Strategic Staffing?

Definition: The process of staffing an organization in

future-oriented and goal-directed ways that support the

organization’s business strategy and enhance

organizational effectiveness.

This involves the movement of people into, through, and

out of the organization.

How Strategic Staffing Differs from

Traditional Staffing

• Traditional staffing:

– Less tied to strategy

– More reactive and likely to be done in response to an opening

– Lacks continuous improvement effort

• Strategic staffing systems incorporate:

– Longer-term planning

– Alignment with the firm’s business strategy

– Alignment with the other areas of HR

– Alignment with the labor market

– Targeted recruiting

– Sound candidate assessment on factors related to job success and longer-term potential

– The evaluation of staffing outcomes against pre-identified goals

Staffing Process

Seven Components of Strategic

Staffing

Table 1-1 Seven Components of Strategic Staffing

1. Workforce Planning: strategically evaluating the company’s current lines of

business, new businesses it will be getting into, businesses it will be leaving, and

the gaps between the current skills in the organization and the skills it will need to

execute its business strategy

2. Sourcing Talent: locating qualified individuals and labor markets from which to

recruit

3. Recruiting Talent: making decisions and engaging in practices that affect either

the number or types of individuals willing to apply for and accept job offers

4. Selecting Talent: assessing job candidates and deciding who to hire

5. Acquiring Talent: putting together job offers that appeal to chosen candidates,

and persuading job offer recipients to accept those job offers

6. Deploying Talent: assigning people to appropriate jobs and roles in the

organization to best utilize their talents

7. Retaining Talent: keeping successful employees engaged and committed to the

firm

Workforce Planning

Definition: The process of predicting an organization’s

future employment needs, and the availability of current

employees and external hires to meet those employment

needs, and execute the organization’s business strategy.

• Usually involves both, the hiring manager and a staffing

specialist.

• Can be short-term and focus on an immediate hiring need.

• Can be long-term and focus on the organization’s needs in

the future. Workforce planning is better strategically the more

it addresses both the firm’s short- and long-term needs.

Sourcing and Recruiting Talent

Sourcing: locating qualified individuals and labor markets

from which to recruit.

Recruiting: all organizational practices and decisions that

affect either the number or types of individuals willing to apply

for and accept job offers.

Sourcing identifies people who would be good recruits.

Recruiting activities entice them to apply to the organization

and accept job offers, if extended.

Selecting and Acquiring Talent

Selecting: assessing job candidates and deciding whom

to hire.

• Operates in a strong legal context.

Acquiring: involves putting together job offers that appeal

to chosen candidates, and persuading job offer recipients

to accept those job offers and to join the organization.

• Negotiations usually result in employment contracts.

Deploying Talent

Deploying: assigning talent to appropriate jobs and roles

in the organization.

• Succession planning and career development enhance

deployment options.

Socializing: the process of familiarizing newly hired and

promoted employees with their job, workgroup, and

organization as a whole.

Retaining Talent

• Succession management and career development

are effective tools.

• Turnover of high performers can be expensive.

• Turnover of low performers can be beneficial.

• Retention saves money in recruiting and hiring

replacements for those leaving.

Matchmaking Process

• Recruiting and selection are interdependent, two-way

processes in which both employers and recruits try to look

appealing to the other while learning as much as they can

about their potential fit.

• Applicants and organizations choose each other.

• Recruitment continues until the person is no longer a

viable job candidate, or until a job offer is accepted and

the person reports for work.

• Some firms continuously “recruit” current employees to

maintain their attractiveness as an employer and enhance

retention.

Staffing Goals (1 of 3)

Process Goals—during the hiring process

• Attracting sufficient numbers of appropriately qualified

applicants

• Complying with the law and organizational policies

• Fulfilling any affirmative action obligations

• Meeting hiring timeline goals

• Staffing efficiently

Staffing Goals (2 of 3)

Outcome Goals—after hire

• Hiring successful employees

• Hiring individuals who will be eventually promoted

• Reducing turnover rates among high performers

• Hiring individuals for whom the other HR functions will have the

desired impact

• Meeting stakeholder needs

• Maximizing the financial return on the firm’s staffing investment

• Enhancing employee diversity

• Enabling organization flexibility

• Enhancing business strategy execution

Staffing Goals (3 of 3)

• Should be aligned with improving the strategic performance

of the staffing system.

• The primary staffing goal is to match the competencies, styles,

values, and traits of job candidates with the requirements of

the organization and its jobs.

• Strategic staffing goes even further and enables the

organization to better execute its business strategy and attain

its business goals.

• Staffing goals should be consistent with the goals and needs of

all stakeholders in the staffing process, including applicants

and hiring managers.

Questions to Ask in Setting Staffing

Goals

Table 1-3 Questions to Ask When Setting Staffing Goals

• Is it more important to fill the position quickly or fill it with

someone who closely matches a particular talent profile?

• What levels of which competencies, styles, values, and traits are

really needed for job success and to execute the business

strategy?

• What is the business’s strategy and what types of people will it

need 1, 5, and 10 years from now?

• What talents must new hires possess rather than be trained to

develop?

• What are the organization’s long-term talent needs? Is it

important for the person hired to have the potential to assume

leadership roles in the future?

Integration With Other Areas of HR

• Training

• Performance management

• Compensation

• Succession planning

• Career development

• Recruitment impacts selection activities and the likelihood

of successfully identifying good hires

Internet Staffing Resources

• The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

(www.eeoc.gov)

• Electronic Recruiting Exchange (www.ere.net)

• Human Resource Planning Society (http://hrps.org)

• O*Net Center (http://online.onetcenter.org)

• Society for Human Resource Management (www.shrm.org)

• Staffing.org

• World at Work (www.worldatwork.org)

http://www.eeoc.gov/

http://www.ere.net/

http://hrps.org/

http://online.onetcenter.org/

https://www.shrm.org/

http://staffing.org/

https://www.worldatwork.org/home/html/home.jsp

Discussion Questions (1 of 2)

1. Relate a hiring experience you have had as a job

seeker to the process illustrated in Figure 1-1. What

could the organization you applied to have done to

improve your experience?

2. Assume that your organization wants to pursue a

staffing strategy of acquiring the best talent possible.

Give an example of how the firm’s ability to provide

only average pay can affect the success of this staffing

strategy.

3. Why is staffing so important to store performance as

discussed in the chapter vignette?

Discussion Questions (2 of 2)

4. Recruiting and selection are interdependent, two-way

processes in which both employers and recruits try to

look appealing to the other while learning as much as

they can about their potential fit. Impression management

is the process through which people and employers each

try to control the impressions others form of them. How

do applicants and employers try to look appealing to each

other during the staffing process?

5. If your CEO asked you why she should invest more

money in the organization’s staffing systems, what would

you tell her?

Strategy Exercise

• Working alone for five minutes, take notes about how

you might design a staffing plan for your own job. If you

have no work experience, choose a job with which you

are familiar.

• Next, form a group of 3-4 students, choose one job, and

design a staffing plan for it. Be prepared to share your

ideas with the class.

Opening Vignette Exercise (1 of 2)

This chapter’s opening vignette described how Caribou

Coffee discovered the importance of carefully staffing its

store manager positions. Working in a group of three to five

students, address the following questions. Be prepared to

share your ideas with the class.

Opening Vignette Exercise (2 of 2)

a. Describe three staffing goals that would reinforce

Caribou’s desire to hire the best store managers.

b. How else can Caribou Coffee ensure that its staffing

strategy for store managers is integrated with the firm’s

other HR functional areas?

Chern’s Case Assignment

a. Identify realistic long-term and short-term staffing

process and outcome goals for Chern’s.

b. Ensure your goals are related to Chern’s business

strategy and explain why each is important.

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