Staffing function of management consists of manpower planning, recruitment, selection, training, compensation, promotion & maintenance of managerial personnel.
“The managerial function of staffing involves manning the organizational structure through proper & effective selection, appraisal & development of personnel to fill the roles designed into the structure”: – Koontz and O’Donnell
Need and Importance of Staffing
How can the enterprise objectives be achieved if competent persons are not appointed in the organisation? What would be the fate of an organisation that is indifferent to the training requirements of its personnel? How will the managers and operators feel if they are not duly compensated for their sacrifices for the organisation? Will the morals of the people not come down, if nobody in the organisation looks after their welfare? The answers to these questions reveal the need and importance of staffing.
The need and importance of staffing function of management can be assessed by the following benefits that this function provides;
- Providing Suitable Personnel. Staffing involves manning the organization structure through proper recruitment and selection processes. The staffing team develops employment tests and tools and holds different types of interviews. It arranges to reject the unsuitable candidates and helps in selecting the suitable ones for various posts in the organisation. Thus shows that a good and strong staffing team is a necessary requirement of enterprise, as a weak staffing department may allow the infiltration of incompetent persons in the organization.
- Keeping Pace with New Developments. It is necessary for an organisation to keep in touch with the technological developments and innovations. Any enterprise indifferent to such developments will lag behind and never be able to catch up with competitors. Staffing department ensures that through the processor of training and retraining all personnel in the organisation keep themselves abreast of the latest techniques of doing the management and operational work.
- Compensation. People working in an organization will feel satisfied if they are duly compensated for the efforts they put in their organization. The staffing applies the various appraisal and job evaluation techniques and measures the competence of individuals and the worth of different jobs. Thus, an attempt is made to recognize the competence of individuals so that they may be compensated appropriately.
- Maintaining Human Resources. The persons selected for an organization should be willing to work for a pretty long period. Many organizations fail because of rapid human resource turnover problems. It is, therefore, necessary that the morale of employees remains high throughout their stay in the organization. They feel satisfied if their working conditions, welfare, health and other requirements are properly taken care of. Employees feel attached to organization where such facilities are given.
- Job satisfaction. The staffing department should look after the job satisfaction of the people of its organization. Job satisfaction may be provided by involving people in formulating the objectives and decision- making, by placing suitable parsons at suitable jobs, by the techniques of job enlargement and job enrichment. Job enlargement means adding more activities to the existing jobs. Job enrichment means given more autonomy to the jobholders to do the job as they deem fit.
- Utilization of human Resources. Staffing function of management tries to optimize the utilization of human resources. It avoids both the over and under manning. It properly finds out the requirement of human resources in the organisation and utilizes it to the fullest.
- Sharpening other functions. Staffing function is instrumental in improving the effectiveness of other managerial functions. It fills up all the posts and the people selected through this function keep the organization going up. If the people selected through staffing are competent, they do the other managerial functions effectively.