What Is a Project Staffing Plan?

To define a project staffing plan, you must be aware of what a staffing plan is in the first place. A staffing plan is a strategic planning process in which a company’s personnel needs are assessed and identified, usually by the HR team. A good staffing plan can help you figure out how many and what kinds of workers you will need to achieve your company’s goals. Before you proceed to write out the plan, you can make use of the project staffing plan template readily available for you so you won’t have to start from scratch. So, go ahead and proceed to view the project staffing plan example that is provided for you in this article.

Five Staffing Options

Motivated individuals with the necessary abilities and experience complete the work and drive innovation. But due to the various hiring strategy available in society, you may be puzzled about which method is the best for your company’s unique challenges and circumstances. Give this curated list a read to learn more about the definition of each of the staffing options you could select.

Full-Time Employees: This is probably self-evident. Full-time employees are permanent exempt or non-exempt employees who are hired, supervised, and paid directly by a company. Internal managers direct these resources and evaluate their performance, assigning them goals and objectives. When the requirement is indefinite and there are suitably experienced individuals available for employment, a company chooses to add full-time resources. If you select this type of staffing for your company, it is a given that the commitment they offer is fully focused on you. This goes without saying that the responsibility of training and continuing education of full-time employees, especially for those with professional certifications is expected from the company.Staff Augmentation Resources: Temporary staff employees assigned to an existing function or team for a specific purpose for a set length of time are known as staff augmentation resources. The organization handles the temporary employees directly in this employment strategy. When current internal resources are overburdened with other projects or they lack a certain talent or experience that is only needed for a short period, organizations frequently hire temporary workers. If you have resilient talents but need to temporarily scale the team to meet your goals, staff augmentation is optional. It’s difficult to assess the effectiveness of a staff augmentation resource if you don’t have the necessary capabilities.Professional Services: Organizations use third-party consultants, also known as consultants, to help them solve a specific business problem when they don’t have the time or ability to do it themselves or when the need is urgent. A consulting company with the allotted resources is given an issue to address, and they propose a solution that may include designing and implementing a solution. If the consulting company is chosen for the project, it is responsible for delivering the deliverables on schedule and in a high-quality way, based on the parties’ agreed-upon strategy and duties. Consulting resources are self-managed and exclusively accountable to the organization for obligations made in a work statement.Outsourcing or Managed Services: Exporting the contingency planning program to a third party relieves the company of the burden of employing and keeping scarce people to conduct a critical risk management function. In an outsourced capacity, the organization defines the approach with the advice of the outsourcer and then measures performance as if the outsourcer’s resources were internal employees. Best of all, the outsourcer keeps delivering while updating the work with current best practices learned via its work with other companies. The outsourcer may be involved in the response to a disruptive incident in addition to running the planning process.The Hybrid Model: In some circumstances, a hybrid model may be the best option for your company. Professional services would initially manage and direct the project, but later on, professionals or employee augmentation would indeed be introduced to either work in conjunction with the professional services department during the engagement or to be onboarded as the effort shifts to permanent, internal resources as the consulting engagement concludes. Make sure that if you select this option, the blend of the staffing options fits well into your company or the project you are tasked with.

How to Calculate Staffing Needs

You can learn more about the thought process that goes into your staffing needs from this list now that you have read through the staffing choice. The three major steps in a staffing strategy are determining existing staffing levels, estimating future staffing needs, and finding the gaps between the two. You can offer ideas for how to meet your staffing needs once you’ve reviewed them, which could involve recruiting and hiring new talent, internally promoting, focusing on training and employee development, or adding contractors to your team. These projections and recommendations will aid in the development of the organization’s overall human resources strategy.

Determine Your Project’s Objectives: Before you start making adjustments to your staffing strategy, you need to know what the company’s overall goals are. A strategic company plan usually outlines these objectives. This plan can be used to clarify the company’s goals and align the staffing plan with them. What you do with your employees will have an impact on company outcomes, for better or worse, so make sure the two plans are in sync. If your company is planning to launch a new location, you may need to reorganize your current workforce or acquire new personnel to fill those positions. The company plan will assist in making those personnel decisions.Determine the Present State of Your Staffing: To create a staffing strategy, you must first comprehend your current staffing situation. This stage could be quite simple if you have a solid HR database. However, if you have many sources of personnel data, you must first integrate them into a single source of truth. Work with corporate executives and managers to verify that your human resource data is accurate and thorough. You can examine the existing staffing climate and begin to extract meaningful insights from the data after you have all of your staffing data in one place. Keep in mind the number of your staff, assignments, skills, and performances.Forecast Future Staffing Needs: It’s time to make some projections regarding your future staffing demands after you have assessed your present staffing situation. When assessing your staffing needs, keep in mind the factors that can influence hiring decisions and opportunities, such as profitability rates and estimations, anticipated investments, new product development, industry labor costs, and the unemployment rate. All of these internal and external issues might have an impact on your workforce and personnel requirements. While some guessing will always be involved in predicting, the following strategies can help you make more confident, knowledgeable, and accurate predictions.Trend Analysis: For companies that have been around for a while, trend analysis works effectively. Historical data, such as previous experience, is used in trend analysis to predict future needs. Begin by gathering historical information for data analysis. Concentrate on accumulating data for the previous five or more years. Remember that the higher the sample size, the more precise the results will be. Gather information on the employment and retirement rates, relocation and promotions, staff turnover, and previous job experience. After you have gathered the data, you may analyze it to see how turnover rates have changed over time and to look for trends or patterns in the data sets.Ratio Analysis: A ratio analysis is a two-in-one forecasting tool that predicts staffing needs while also comparing forecasting results to a benchmark. The ratio analysis has the advantage of not relying on historical data to forecast future demand. This is a benefit for newer businesses that don’t have access to years of past data to forecast future patterns. A ratio, for instance, establishes a link between two items. Ratios between business elements such as future sales revenue estimates and personnel requirements can be calculated by a company.Gap Analysis: After you have completed your current and future staffing assessments, you may compare the two reports to see if there are any gaps. You should be aware of the inconsistencies you are dealing with, as well as the skills you will need in the future to achieve your company’s objectives. Make a note of any discrepancies between the two assessments. Our skills supply and demand chart can assist you in determining how many present employees and job seekers possess the abilities you require, as well as whether you should hire or train to acquire those talents.

How to Write a Project Staffing Plan

Your personnel strategy could include suggestions for implementing a company workshop training to address skills gaps or developing succession policies for upcoming retirements or promotions. Work with the company’s management to develop a strategic action plan to meet staffing needs that is consistent with the company’s goals, culture, and mission. When your company is experiencing considerable expansion, it’s critical to anticipate the demand for new employees. Developing a project staffing plan is vital which leads you to the project staffing plan sample provided in this article.

Step 1: Determine Your Goals

Simply put, the staffing strategy must be in line with the business strategy. Be informed of the organization’s growth monitoring strategy. If your employees are needed to staff a new office or retail site, you should be suspicious. Calculate the necessary number to multiply the size of the company’s sales team to sustain a substantial sales push. At the end of the day, it’s critical to provide additional customer service or internal assistance to enhance client satisfaction. Start with the company’s strategic plan to ensure that your talent strategy and anticipated outcomes are in alignment.

Step 2: Determine the Factors That Influence Personnel Availability

For the next section, determine what factors may have an impact on employee availability. Similar statistics for their state or local region should be examined by both large and small businesses. Local chambers of commerce, business journals, and industry associations can provide this information. Additionally, these institutions frequently synthesize data to provide an overview of market developments. This could involve new or larger companies hiring more people or laying off workers. All of these outside influences have an impact on the talent pool available.

Step 3: Determine the Functional Requirements of the Organization

Keep in mind that not all personnel need to demand hiring from outside sources. Some of your company’s talent requirements can be met internally. Outsourcing to consultants, freelancers, or independent contractors may be able to meet some of your needs. That’s why it’s a good idea to analyze the exact skills and abilities you will need and see if each organization, department, or division currently has them in-house or nearby. Inquire about how training, coaching, and other forms of growth can assist current employees in moving up or over to new or vacated jobs. These abilities and employees, on the other hand, are required indefinitely and for the long run.

Step 4: Conduct Gap Analysis

In a nutshell, a gap report examines what you have now to what you require. Ensure that the gaps in your analysis are attributable to a lack of training and development. If this is the case, include further training in your strategy for the relevant functions or positions. Examine the gaps that have arisen as a result of excessive workloads during peak seasonal demand periods, and if necessary, engage temporary personnel or outsource to contractors. A gap analysis isn’t the same as evaluating functional demands in general, but you will be able to identify not only the gaps but also potential solutions for closing them.

Step 5: Create the Plan

Your staffing plan should include a summary of all of the assessments and analyses completed as well as a description of the decision-making process. This exercise can be divided down by division for larger businesses, with the sub-plans integrated at the end. Organizational leadership, recruiting managers, and HR executives are all involved in creating a high-quality staffing plan. It’s a company-wide endeavor that’s similar to, if not identical to, budgeting. As a result, clear communication across roles and departments is critical to developing a plan that considers everyone’s interests and works for everyone.

FAQs

Do staffing agencies earn good money?

A staffing agency, often known as recruiting, staffing company, or service, is a business that connects employers and job seekers. By working with a staffing agency, you can potentially connect with several hiring managers that are looking for the ideal people for their open positions. In summary, staffing agencies are experiencing a surge in business from both employers and job seekers. Owning a staffing company may be highly profitable if you have the correct location and the right business abilities. Of course, the agency makes money and grows into a successful corporation.

Why are staffing plans important?

A staffing strategy pushes you to analyze, review, and design a strategy to assist your firm in meeting its objectives. You may therefore coordinate your recruitment efforts to attract the best candidates for your company’s requirements. Without a staffing plan, you may not be aware of who is assigned for a particular job assignment towards the project that is assigned to your company which may cause trouble in the execution process.

What is a staffing analysis?

A staffing analysis is a process of finding tendencies among your staff, such as employee turnover, job satisfaction, the levels of staffing required to manage a workload, and the skills and experience of potential employees. An analysis is used to discover trends such as the amount of staffing required to manage the workload, the organization’s structure, and employee job satisfaction. The average years of service contributed by employees to the company are also identified through trend analysis.

Writing a staffing plan in project management is tricky if you are unfamiliar with the process. But you don’t have to worry because not only are you not starting from scratch, but you can make use of the templates and samples for references. A project staffing management plan will surely keep your company organized.