Staffing

Staffing is the process of acquiring, employing, developing, remunerating and appraising people so that right person are available and are put on right jobs in the organization.
Within each of these aspects of staffing, there are various activities. For example, acquiring people involves human resource planning, recruitment, and selection. Thus, staffing conversely wide-ranging activities is relevant for keeping organisational positions filled.

Nature of staffing

The staffing function is related to the employment of personnel of all types, both managerial and operative, in the organization.
Staffing includes a variety of activities through which organization tries to ensure that various positions remain filled by the most suitable personnel.
Staffing function is performed by every manager in the organization like other managerial functions : planning, organizing, directing and controlling though they receive considerable staff assistance in performing staffing function.

Human resource management

HR management involves acquiring right personnel and developing and retaining them to achieve competitive advantage.
Staffing also covers these functions. Thus, staffing is equated with human resource management.

HR department performs the following activites:

Human resource planning → HR planning involves assessing human resource requirement, present human resource available, and additional human resource to be aquired through different sources.
Job analysis → job analysis is the process of analyzing responsibilities of each specific job. Based on this analysis, job description and job specification are prepared.
- Job description shows tasks, duties, and conditions of job performance. Job specification shows the various characteristics of a job performer.
Recruitment and selection → recruitment involves indentifying the sources of recruitment and attracting the candidates to offer themselves for employement.
- Selection involves choosing those candidates who are most suited to the jobs.
Training and development → training and development invloves developing skills in employees to perform jobs in the most desirable way.
Appraisal → appraisal involves evaluating job performance of employees and their job related skills and behaviours.
Compensation → conpensation involves determining base salary/wage, incentives, and perquisites (A payment, profit, or benefit received in addition to a regular wages) for different jobs.
Industrial relations → it involves designing industrial relations system, handling industrial disputes, handling employee grievances, and prescribing methods for taking disciplinary actions

Importance of staffing

Filling organizational positions

A basic problem being faced by organizations throughout the world is the acute competition for good quality human resources.
We find a paradox in Indian situation in which there is abundant supply of unskilled labour but acute shortage of good quality managerial and technical personnel.
In such a situation, there is a need for systematic staffing so that the organization can fill its various positions with personnel of good quality.

Developing compentencies

It is not sufficient that various organizational positions are filled but there should be development of competencies among personnel because of changing nature of environment in which nature of job profiles keeps on changing.
In this changing job profile situation, the rate of skill obsolescence (becoming obsolete(no longer use)) is very high.
Therefore, there is a need for developing competencies among personnel on continous basis.
For making employees competent, newer training and development techniques are being evolved.

Retaining Personnel

Apart from acquiring and developing personnel, retaining them in the organization is equally important.
In order to retain employees, organizations are adopting many methods having long-term implications besides persuading the employees to remain with them.

Optimum use of HR

In filling organizational positions through staffing, an atempt is made that there is match between job and employee performing the job. This feature covers all jobs and all employees. Because of this match, there is optimum use of human resources.

Efficient use of other resources

Various organizational departements/divisions are allocated physical and financial resources, besides human resources. When there is match between a position and the position holder, physical and financial resources are used efficiently as the position holder knows well how these resources may be utilized in the most efficient way.

Employee satisfaction

Staffing leads to employee satisfaction in several ways: feeling of an employee that he is doing a job which matches him, development of the employee on continous basis, availability of promotion avenues, incentives for better work performance, etc. This satisfaction leads to heightened employee morale and his productivity goes up.

Improved organizational performance

proper staffing leads to improved organizational performance in the following ways:
1. matching jobs and job performers leads to better utilization of organizational resources resulting in improved performance.
2. satisfied human resources; achieve better results.
3. retaining human resources leads to decreased cost of recruitement, selection and development of employees.

Functions of Staffing

Human Resource Planning

HRP deals with forecasting of additional human resources required in an organization in future.
Definition → it is the process by which an organization ensures that it has the right number and kind of people who are capable of effectively and efficiently completing those tasks that will help the organization achieve its overall objectives.

Importance of HRP

HRP is of primacy nature and, therefore, it preceds all other staffing functions.

HRP contributes in the following ways in managing HR in an organization.

Defining future personnel need → it defines future personnel need and this becomes the basis of recruiting and developing personnel.
- In its absence, there is likelihood of mismatch between personnel needed and personnel available.
- Lack of systematic HRP may either result in understaffing or overstaffing, not proper staffing.
Coping with changes → in the present businesss environment, fast changes are taking place.
- In this situation, every organization is trying to complete on the basis of technology and human resources.
- Technological changes, generally, require more competent persons.
- As a result, there may be need for additional competent personnel in some areas while there may be surplus of personnel in other areas.
- HR planning helps in creating a balance in such a situation by estimating need for additional personnel as well as surplus personnel.
Providing Base for Developing Talents → Jobs are becoming more and more knowledge oriented.
- This has resulted in changed profile of human resources. For example, in Larsen and Toubro, MBAs, engineers, and technicians constitute about 70 per cent of its total employee strength. Because of increasing emphasis on knowledge, there is shortage of certain category of personnel and there are frequent movements of such category of personnel from one organization to another.
- The replacement cost of such personnel is estimated to be 1.5 times of the expenses incurred on these personnel. Therefore, an organization must be ready to face such an eventuality by taking proper HR planning.
Increasing Investment in Human Resources → The cost of acquiring, developing, and retaining personnel is increasing much faster than the average rate of inflation. This increasing cost can be taken care of by proper HR planning which provides the way for effective utilization of such personnel.

Job Analysis

Job analysis is the process of identifying the nature of job and the qualities of job performer. This process produces job description and job specification.

Job description

Job description is a written statement showing details of the job. Generally, a job description contains the following information:
1. Job title, code number, department/division.
2. Job contents in terms of activities or tasks performed.
3. Job responsibilities towards effective performance of the job.
4. Working conditions specifying specific hazards.
5. Social environment prevailing at the workplace.
6. Machine tools and equipments to be handled.
7. Extent of supervision given and received.
8. Relationship with other jobs-vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. Uses of Job Description

Job description is used in the following areas of human resource management:

Job grading and job classification.
Providing base for preparing job specification, leading to recruitment and selection.
Procurement and placement of employees.
Developing career path.
Training and development.
Setting performance standards and appraisal.
Promotion and transfer.
Developing work procedures and processes.
Taking preventive measures to minimize the impact of hazardous conditions.
Employee counselling and vocational guidance.

Job Specification

Job specification, also known as man or employee specification, is a statement of minimum acceptable qualities required in a job incumbent for the effective performance of the job.
In contrast to job description which provides various features of the job, job specification specifies various features of the job-holder.

A job specification is prepared on the basis of job description. Its contents are as follows:

Personal characteristics such as age, sex, education, job experience, and extra and co-curricular activities.
Physical characteristics such as height, weight, chest, vision, hearing, health, voice, poise, and hand and foot coordination.
Mental characteristics such as general intelligence, memory, judgement, foresight, ability to concentrate, etc.
Social and psychological characteristics such as emotional stability, flexibility. manners, initiative, drive, conversational ability, creativity, etc.

Recruitment and Selection

After the identification of need for the number and type of personnel as indicated by human resource planning and job analysis, the next step is to acquire these personnel.
This involves location of such personnel, motivating them to offer themselves for consideration for selection, and selecting the personnel who fit with job requirements
The whole process is known as recruitment and selection. Recruitment and selection, though differ in terms of process and orientation, are often used together because these are closely related.

Recruitment

Recruitment is the process concerned with the identification of sources from where the personnel can be employed and motivating them to offer themselves for employment.
Thus, recruitment process is concerned with the identification of possible sources of human resource supply and tapping those sources.
. In the total process of acquiring and placing human resources in the organization, recruitment falls in between different sub-processes as shown in Figure ↓

There are various sources of recruitment which are grouped into two categories: internal sources and external sources. Within each category, there are different sources.

Internal sources of recruitment

Filling organizational positions through internal sources is rearrangement of the existing employees as there is no increase in number of employees. There are two ways in which internal sources may be used: transfer and promotion:
Transfer → Transfer involves shifting an employee from one department to another or from one place to another without changing his nature of job. Transfer is a very common practice in government administration. In business organizations, transfer is used to rationalize workforce by transferring surplus employees of one unit/department to another having shortage of employees or transferring employees from one function to another to develop multi-skills.
Promotion → Promotion involves upward movement of an employee in organizational hierarchy. In this case, there is change in job contents of the employee-more authority and responsibility, more compensation, and higher status. Promotion is very common in organizations. It leads to motivation to employees and they put hard work for getting promotion. It serves the organizational need of having competent persons at higher positions who are well-versed with organizational functioning.
There are certain advantages of recruitment from internal sources which are as follows:
1. Filling higher positions through internal sources is motivating to employees as they have chance for promotion.
2. It leads to loyalty of employees towards the organization because of their long stay.
3. It is quite simple and economical.
4. It reduces employee development cost because the same employee works elsewhere with same set of skills.
5. It helps in workforce rationalization.
6. It is helpful in developing multi-skills in employ
Disadvantages of recruitment from internal sources are as follows:
1. It leads to in-breeding which may block creativity relevant for working in innovative way.
2. It tends to reduce productivity of employees because of assured promotion.

External Sources of Recruitment

In external sources of recruitment, employees are selected from outside the organization. These sources are as follows:

Advertisement → Advertisement is the most commonly used source of external recruitment. Advertisement may be through newspapers (the most common) and technical publications. Details of positions and their requirements along with how to apply are mentioned in the advertisement.
Campus Recruitment → In this, employing organizations visit campuses of various academic institutions offering relevant course on pre-specified time and date. The entire selection process is performed at the campus itself.
Job Fairs → In one way, a job fair is a kind of variant of campus recruitment. In a job fair, various academic institutions located in a large city jointly organize recruitment programme. In this programme, candidates of different institutes, even from non-organizing institutes, come by paying the prescribed fee. Organizations visit the fair by invitation. The selection process takes place like campus recruitment.
Internet Recruiting → It is an electronic mode of external recruitment devoid of any paper work. In this mode, two alternatives are followed. First, the organization notifies its vacancies on its website along with other details. Candidates apply in response to this notification. Second, many job seekers post their biodata on different websites and an organization may contact suitable candidates from them. It is the quickest way of recruiting with much lower cost.
Placement Agencies → In many cases, organizations do not take recruitment and selection process on their own but take the services of placement agencies. These agencies maintain the database of job seekers. They conduct the entire selection process and recommend the candidates to be employed by an organization. This frees the organization from undertaking time-consuming recruitment and selection process. Through this method, positions at any level may be filled.
Employment Exchanges → Government has established employment exchanges in most of the cities. These exchanges register job seekers. Whenever an organization sends its requirement of employees, these exchanges inform the job seekers concerned and provide their list to the organization. Rest of the process is conducted by the organization. This is suitable for filling positions at lower levels.
Employee Recommendations → Present and former employees of an organization may recommend specific persons suitable for employment. These persons may be family members, friends or acquaintances of the employees concerned. Since the employees are fully conversant with the way of working of the organization, their recommendations may be more suitable. Generally, lower positions are filled by this method though in exceptional cases, higher positions may also be filled.

PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF MANAGEMENT Recruitment from external sources has various advantages which are as follows:
1. It leads to attracting competent persons to apply for the jobs.
2. There is wide scope for selecting the suitable candidates.
3. It helps in infusing new talents in the organization.
4. It leads to development of competitive spirit in the existing employees for getting higher positions.
Disadvantages of recruitment from external sources are as follows:
1. It leads to dissatisfaction of employees as their promotion chances are reduced,
2. It is quite lengthy process taking lot of time of persons involved in recruitment and selection.
3. It results in higher cost of recruitment and selection.
4. It may disrupt organizational practices because the new employees may have their own specific work practices.

Selection

Selection is the process of choosing the most suitable candidates out of the several candidates available.
Selection is called a negative process because there may be more candidates who are rejected than those who are selected in most of the selection processes.
Recruitment and selection differ in terms of objective, process, technique, and outcome, which are as follows:
1. The ultimate objectives of both recruitment and selection are to acquire suitable candidates but their immediate objectives differ. The basic objective of recruitment is to attract maximum number of candidates so that more options are available. The basic objective of selection is to choose the best out of the available candidates.
2. Recruitment differs from selection in terms of process. Recruitment adopts the process of creating application pool as large as possible and, therefore, it is known as positive process. Selection adopts the process through which more and more candidates are rejected and fewer candidates are selected or sometimes even not a single candidate is selected. Therefore, it is known as negative process or rejection process.
3. There is difference between recruitment and selection so far as techniques involved are concerned. Recruitment techniques are not very intensive, requiring high skills. As against this, in selection process, highly specialized techniques are required. Therefore, in the selection process, only personnel with specific skills like expertise in using selection tests, conducting interviews, etc., are involved

Selection Process

Screening of Applications → Prospective employees have to fill up some sort of application forms. These forms have variety of information about the applicants like their personal bio- data, achievements, experience, etc. Such information is used to screen the applicants who are found to be qualified for the consideration of employment. Based on the screening of applications, only those candidates are called for further process of selection who are found to be meeting the job standards of the organization.
Selection Tests → Many organizations hold different kinds of selection tests to know more about the candidates or to reject the candidates who cannot be called for interview, etc. Selection tests normally supplement the information provided in the application forms by giving information about aptitude, interest, personality, etc. of the candidates which cannot be known by application forms.
Checking of References → Many organizations ask the candidates to provide the names of referees from whom more information about the candidates can be solicited. Such information may be related to character, working, etc. The usual referees may be previous employers, persons associated with the educational institutions from where the candidates have received education, or other persons of prominence who may be aware of the candidates' behaviour and ability.
Physical Examination → Physical examination is carried out to ascertain the physical standards and fitness of prospective employees. The practice of physical examination varies a great deal both in terms of coverage and timing. While many organizations do not carry physical examinations at all, others carry on a very comprehensive basis. Some organizations only have general check up of applicants to find the major physical problems which may come in the way of effective discharge of duties. In the context of timing also, there are different practices: some organizations conduct physical examination near the end of the selection process; others conduct it relatively early in the process. The latter practice is generally adopted when there is high demand for physical fitness.
Selection of Candidates → On the basis of the above steps, suitable candidates are selected for employment. In some cases, the selection committee is not empowered to select candidates finally but it has authority only for recommending the names of the candidates selected by it for approval of appropriate authority.
Approval by Authority → Organizations may designate the various authorities for approval of final selection of candidates for different categories of candidates. Thus, for top level managers, Board of Directors may be approving authority; for lower levels, even functional heads concerned may be approving authority. In university, it may be syndicate/ executive committee. When the approval is received, the candidates are informed about their selection.
Employment Contract → Relationship between an organization and its employees is contractual. Therefore, every new recruit has to enter a contract with the organization. Along with appointment letter specifying when and where to join the organization, every new recruit is sent an agreement form specifying the terms and conditions of employment. With this, the selection process for filling positions at a time is over.

Selection Tests

A selection test is an instrument designed to measure specific qualities of the candidates.
There are various types of selection tests. They have different objectives and measure different attributes. However, most these tests fall in one of the following Categories.
1. Achievement Test → A.K.A performance test and it measures achievement of candidates.
  - Achievement is concerned with what one has accomlished.
  - when candidates claim that they have done certain things so performance test is usually used for selecting employees at operative level as well as junior management level.
2. Intelligence Test → Intelligence test tries to measure the level of intelligence of candidate.
  - The score of the test is usually expressed numbericaly as Intelligence Quotient (IQ) = (Mental age / Actual age) * 100
3. Personality test → personality test is administered to predict performance success for jobs that require dealing with people, or jjobs that are essentially supervisory or managerial in charater.
4. Aptitude test → aptitude test is used for measuring human performance characteristics related to the possible development of prodiciency on specific jobs.
5. Interest test → It is designed to discover a person's area of interest, and to identify the kind of jobs that will satisfy him.