With the end of the year, comes many tasks. One of those responsibilities is auditing your annual staffing plan to ensure it’s been effective in addressing staffing issues and needs throughout the year.
First, let’s take a look at what your strategic staffing plan should entail.
Your staffing plan should include defining staffing levels and capabilities of employees, projecting the supply of talent available for the defined levels, identifying gaps between anticipated workforce demands and forecasted talent supplies, and developing the actions and plans needed to close gaps and ensure the company is optimally staffed. The plan should also communicate how issues such as turnover, retirements, and planned movement will be managed.
Now, as the end of 2015 approaches, it’s time to evaluate the above efforts. To ensure your strategic staffing plan is still on track in 2016 and beyond, ask yourself these key questions:
- Have goals and objectives set out in your staffing plan been achieved or are they in the process of being completed? If not, which goals have not been met and why? Is the goal still relevant?
- Have goals been achieved according to the timelines specified in the plan? If not, then why?
- For uncompleted goals, should the deadlines for completion be changed? If so, why? Keep in mind, there was a reason in the first place why you set the initial deadline.
- Do you have adequate resources (funds, recruiting personnel, training programs, etc.) to achieve staffing goals? If not, which areas are lacking and what can be done to improve access to resources?
- Are the goals and objectives in your strategic staffing plan still realistic?
- Have priorities changed throughout the year? Should there be more focus placed on other goals?
- Should any goals be changed or scrapped? If so, think carefully before making the changes, understanding why these goals have not been achieved and why they need to modified or eliminated.
- How can what you’ve learned from evaluating progress improve future planning activities?
Keep in mind, you don’t have to just evaluate your staffing plan at year’s end. The frequency of your evaluations depends on the nature of your organization and the environment in which it’s operating. If you have rapid change going on, then you may need to monitor and audit your plan more frequently.
Too many times, strategic staffing plans end up collecting dust on a shelf. Monitoring and evaluating the planning activities and status of implementation of the plan is vital in keeping momentum going, identifying challenges and issues, and ultimately achieving strategic staffing goals.
If you need any help with the strategic staffing evaluation process, or with staffing in general, contact Morgan Hunter. As a leading Kansas City staffing agency, our experts can work with you to learn about your staffing needs and objectives, and then strategize the most cost-effective plan for meeting them. Contact Morgan Hunter today to learn more.