It’s true that balance is not something you will find; it’s something you will have to create. Isn’t it? As applicable in life, this holds true in workforce management too. Having an imbalance in the organization’s staffing levels can be disastrous for overall productivity, business profitability, and client outcomes. So, if you’re noticing that your business is struggling to achieve its goals or that the employees are not motivated enough, then it’s time to dig deeper and find the real root cause. It could be that there is an issue with your staffing levels.
But before we delve deeper, let’s explore what is staffing level? What are the ways to gauge the staffing needs of an organization accurately? Not just the number of staff needed but also what skill set and level are required. Though there are various approaches human resources (HR) departments take to determine the needed staffing levels, deciding the optimal staffing level is crucial for every organization to avoid having excess employees or avoiding staffing gaps. Optimal staffing also enables enhancing the customer experience and getting better chances for business success and growth. In this blog, you’ll explore the importance of staffing levels and methods that HR can use for staffing analysis and to determine optimal staffing.
Staffing levels denote the size of a company’s workforce, or employee base. The decisions that a business needs to take regarding staffing levels include the positions or roles that need to be hired, how many resources are required, what is the skill set, experience, or expertise needed for those roles, and if these positions can be filled from within the organization or require fresh recruiting. Organizations should also ensure that they have ample resources without overbooking the existing team members. This helps to optimize cost efficiency while making sure that the current staff doesn’t feel overwhelmed or frustrated by being burdened with extra work. Additionally, organizations need to take into account demand fluctuations while making staffing decisions for various roles so that they are adequately staffed during peak times, and they also optimally utilize their employees during lean periods.
Staffing strategies and plans may vary based on the business size, industry type, and anticipated growth. Here are some of the common types of staffing plans:
1. Short-term staffing: This staffing plan aims at an organization’s immediate needs.
2. Long-term staffing: This type of staffing plan takes into account at least the upcoming year.
3. Succession planning: This staffing plan enables you to anticipate the exit or lateral movement of managers and, therefore, train and prepare some internal candidates to take up those roles.
4. Strategic staffing: This type of staffing plan involves a blend of short and long-term staffing and succession planning.
Keeping your organization’s staffing levels under control can be challenging for any business, particularly those growing rapidly or those restructuring. However, understanding your staffing levels and keeping them at a balanced level is crucial to ensure operational efficiency and business profitability. If the staffing levels are not tracked, overstaffing is a possibility, which can be an expensive option financially and could lead to having too many employees in specific departments or create an imbalance or resourcing gaps in other departments or teams.
However, when you evaluate the staffing levels at regular intervals, you can easily spot if there are extra resources or too few employees across the company. This enables taking proactive steps like hiring part-time or freelance employees or maybe restructuring the departments to reach optimal staffing. Tracking the staffing levels also helps organizations have adequate employees when workloads get demanding during peak season. Investing in the right workforce management or employee scheduling tool can help strike a balance in the staffing levels, ensuring organizations operate seamlessly while saving in the long run from possible overstaffing or unproductive or wasteful processes.
If your HR management maintains low staffing levels, then the workload demands may exceed the resource capacity, which leads to the following challenges or risks:
Having too many resources on board can also be challenging, as overstaffing can result in:
Therefore, maintaining a balance is very important. To summarize, not having adequate staff leads to stress, burnout, which may lead to poor performance. Whereas having too many resources in the business and underutilizing them may lead to bored staff and wasted money. Optimal staffing level refers to having the right number of resources in the organization and ensuring they possess the right skills to be able to meet the strategic goals.
Understanding the staffing needs of your business may seem tricky. However, there are multiple ways in which HR management determines the required staffing levels at the business. Determining the optimal staffing level is crucial for every business to comply with their staffing needs without having extra staff or facing staffing gaps. So, here are some ways in which organizations can decide their staffing levels and avoid the negative impact of under or over-staffing.
Evaluating the project pipeline, demand, and regular business flow provides important insights into your staffing needs. Let’s take an example. Every business has peak demand and lean phases. In the restaurant business, it could be some specific times of the day or month, or a few months in a year. However, in IT or other sectors, it could be certain months. Having said that, it is not easy to gauge the peak and lean times and assess the business flow accurately. HR department and project or operations managers may have a better understanding by monitoring the regular business operations and determining the trend and, accordingly, the staffing levels needed.
The next step is to compare the organizations’ current and upcoming staffing levels and figure out any gaps or existing imbalances. To do a staffing analysis, you can use the following formula to first determine the staffing gap:
Future or Upcoming Demand - Current Supply = Organization’s Staffing Gap
A positive gap denotes that additional resources will need to be hired, while a negative gap means you need to decrease your current employee base. Additionally, you should evaluate the nature and scale of the staffing gap. For example, is it temporary, permanent, or do you foresee a gap in the short or even in the long term.
Besides staffing analysis, you can also assess the staffing needs using an informal yet efficient method. Connect with the project and operations managers about their current and upcoming needs, as they are the ones who typically know the peak times, resource availability, and challenges. As they work with employees on a daily basis and interact with various stakeholders, they have an idea about the resource gaps and what can be done to close them. However, this method is not fool-proof and shouldn’t be used in isolation. Combining this approach with other methods is the ideal way to assess the staffing needs. However, if you want accurate numbers, then implementing a workforce management tool for employee scheduling and optimal staffing is the best option.
Another key indicator of staffing levels and requirements is the customer experience. Organizations can determine their resource requirements by rolling out customer surveys or by gauging if the customers or projects in the pipeline have a longer wait time. There may be times when customer complaints are happening too often, which is also a sign of being short-staffed or not having employees with the right skill set. Businesses can leverage that data to effectively determine the number of resources needed, the role or level at which staff is needed, and what skills are required so that the customer experience can be enhanced. The only challenge with this method is that it doesn’t tell you if the organization is over-staffed at any given time. However, focusing on the customer experience can still be quite helpful.
Businesses should also be aware of the roles that they should always keep covered. For instance, staff is needed for marketing roles, project management roles, business development, etc. at all times. It’s a good idea to create a list of the roles that are critical and always need to be efficiently covered. This also includes considering the time off or planned leave requests to meet the required staffing levels. It’s important to look at the current or remaining staff and check if there are any qualified candidates to backfill for them internally or externally. Doing so is important not only in the long run but also in the short term.
Though this is also not a standalone and accurate method, taking stock of how your competitors are fulfilling their staffing requirements and how they are operating can give you a good idea of their estimated staffing needs. This data helps in benchmarking and creating a rough outline of the ideal staffing requirements based on company size and industry type.
The next step is to craft a staffing plan outlining the ways to resolve your staffing gaps and fill in the needed staffing levels. An organization’s staffing plan must incorporate specific actions, schedules, roles and responsibilities, as well as the needed resources for each staff option you opt for. Some popular staffing options are to go for recruiting, outsourcing to a vendor, training, redeploying, retaining, or even laying off the staff. While finalizing any of these decisions, consider the overall costs, advantages, and risks of all these staffing options and if they align with the organizational objectives, culture, and values.
Finally, you need to implement and track the staffing plan and assess its effectiveness and results. It’s also important to communicate your staffing plan to all the key stakeholders clearly, including the employees, project and resource managers, clients, and suppliers. It’s also important to monitor and gauge the progress and performance to see if you are matching up to the staffing plan. This can be done by using the right key performance indicators (KPIs) and feedback mechanisms. Lastly, it’s crucial that you review and update the organization’s staffing plan on a constant basis and keep amending it as per the requirements.
It is imperative for any business to maintain optimal staffing levels to gain a lot of benefits, including:
eResource Scheduler, a leading workforce management tool reigns as the top solution for employee scheduling, staffing analysis, and time-tracking, project and HR management. A user-friendly and intuitive interface aids in navigating the tool with ease. Additionally, the tool is a preferred choice for most global businesses with remote or distributed teams of various sizes and enables the execution of simple to complex projects. Implement eResource Scheduler for workforce management, resource scheduling, creating project plans, and optimal staffing in just a few simple steps. Make data-driven decisions with its availability reports, Gantt charts, resource utilization reports, and visual dashboards with data in real-time.
Here are the top features of this resource scheduling tool:
Capture up to 125 custom fields of 17 different types for resources, projects, and other forms. For example, skills, certificates, qualifications, etc. This enables best-fit resource identification and resource allocation seamlessly.
Features such as drag-and-drop scheduling, recurring bookings, and day, hour, or month view aid in making resource scheduling efficient and precise with just a few clicks.
Interactive features for resource scheduling like copy, cut, and paste, drag-and-drop, extended/shortened bookings, or split bookings help to make the scheduling process interactive and simple.
Configurable utilization reports display the resource productivity across all levels of the business. The reports are color-coded , which helps track productivity and highlight the under and over-utilized employees. This data further helps in optimal staffing.
Quicker scheduling decisions are backed with data, which saves time and provides visibility in terms of capacity at different levels.
The timesheet built into the platform helps employees to enter the time and effort spent on various tasks. This further helps to calculate the planned vs. actual time spent on various tasks and projects and manage attendance.
With the financial module provided by the tool, you can precisely calculate the cost and billing rates at various levels, process payroll and invoices, and get clear insights into metrics such as resource costs, revenue, and profits.
Multiple customizable calendars enable multiple working timings and open shifts. Customized calendars are perfect for businesses with resources located across geographies and helps HR department and project managers to manage teams seamlessly.
Accurate calculation of capacity, resource utilization, and availability helps make precise resource plans.
Data security and flexible access rights depending on the roles and levels ensure privacy and confidentiality.
Web Cal Integration to view schedules in third-party calendars, allowing resources to view their schedules across different platforms, including mobile devices.
A unified experience offered with an open REST API enables bi-directional data sync with existing applications.
Versions available: Both Self-hosted and SaaS versions are available.
Costing: Available starting at as low as $6.25 per employee per month for Scheduling Module (core).
Try eResource Scheduler for free: Free trial is available for you to try the tool and understand the benefits it brings to your business before you invest in it.
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