Discover the core principles of staff management and how to master them – for an engaged and productive workforce.
Staff management. It sounds fairly straightforward. You have staff, you manage them. But it’s actually more complicated than that.
Staff management starts with the hiring process and ends with exit interviews – by way of onboarding, performance management, development, deployment, and much more.
Managers are proven to be the cornerstone of staff success. According to McKinsey, relationships with management are the top factor in employees' job satisfaction. And Gallup has found that 70% of the variance in team engagement can be attributed to the manager.
But, all too often, new managers are left to work out staff management for themselves. This leaves well-meaning staff managers struggling to get the best from their people.
Beyond this, disconnected HR and resource management processes mean missed strategic staffing opportunities – which can lead to talent shortages, employee dissatisfaction, and turnover.
But don’t worry, our guide will give you the knowledge you need to improve your staff management at a personal or organizational level.
In this article you’ll learn:
Staff management is the process of managing the staffing needs of an organization, to ensure efficient, effective operations and an engaged, productive workforce.
It involves every stage of the employee lifecycle from recruitment and onboarding, to day-to-day and performance management, upskilling and professional development, and more.
Related: What is Staff Planning? The Beginner's Guide
The purpose of staff management is to create a highly skilled workforce and productive work environment – so you optimize staff performance and business outcomes.
The primary goals of staff management include:
Contrary to popular belief, staff management isn’t simply about line managers supervising, managing, and motivating their teams.
As a strategic business discipline, it has several components, starting with capacity and capability planning, and lasting the full employee lifecycle. And it benefits businesses to optimize for every stage.
Here are the 8 key components of the staff management cycle.
Planning involves identifying staffing needs based on organizational goals and forecasting future workforce requirements. This includes:
Effective recruitment and hiring practices are crucial for building a talented and diverse workforce. This involves creating clear job descriptions, using various recruitment channels to attract applications, conducting interviews, and selecting candidates who best fit organizational and job requirements.
The recruitment stage touches on a wide range of activities, including but not limited to:
Onboarding and training involve introducing new employees to the organization and providing them with the training and resources they need to excel. The aim is to support them through their learning curve and reduce their time to competence.
Day-to-day staff deployment involves the effective allocation and management of resources to ensure optimal productivity. Depending on the nature of the business, this can include:
Let’s not forget the other tasks involved in day-to-day staff management, which includes a wide range of activities – from planning and prioritizing work, to processing payroll and expenses.
Performance management is the process of setting goals and expectations, monitoring progress, and providing feedback to workers. It involves monitoring and evaluating employee performance to ensure alignment with organizational objectives and includes:
Employee development focuses on offering continuous learning opportunities and career development programs. This helps your business secure the skills it needs for success and supports employee retention and satisfaction.
Employee turnover comes at a cost – financially and operationally. So retention strategies are worth investing in. To create a positive employee experience and high employee engagement, consider the following:
The exit process kicks in when someone hands in their notice. It ensures a smooth transition to the new post-holder and provides an opportunity to understand what went wrong, and could be improved. It includes:
Where do we start? The staff management process is hard to get right and there are potential pitfalls at every stage of the process 🙈
Staff management problems are why platforms like Runn exist. To make things easier for companies like yours.
Here are some of the major challenges of staff management that we can help with – from recruitment and retention, to skills management and strategic alignment.
A productive and profitable workforce depends on having the right type and number of staff to deliver your product and services, without overspending on staff and skills you don’t need.
But knowing when and who to recruit can be a challenge. Factors like organizational growth, project timelines, market conditions, and seasonal fluctuations can influence recruitment needs. So how can you identify hiring needs.
It comes down to data – you need data to make correct, confident recruitment decisions. Like:
All of which you can find in a platform like Runn – so you can build a reliable staffing model that powers business success.
Even when you know what staff you need, it can be hard to get them. This can lead to sub-optimal staffing levels, which results in long hours, overutilization, and employee burnout. Left unchecked, this can undermine morale and productivity and lead to staff turnover.
Effective resource management is essential to mitigate the challenge of understaffing. To deal with understaffing, you can:
A resource management platform benefits businesses by making this whole process considerably easier – providing data and tools to manage different staff types effectively and balance workloads equitably.
In a larger business, knowing your staff well enough to match them with suitable opportunities is hard.
Unless you’re on a first-name basis with your resources, it’s hard to keep track of who’s who, what they do, and what’s going to stimulate and stretch them.
This is where talent discoverability comes in—the ability to identify and leverage the skills and interests of your workforce.
Resource management software centralizes information about staff roles, skills, interests, and capacity.
This allows you to align individuals with opportunities that engage and develop them – leading to higher employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention – as well as align with your strategic priorities.
OK. Beyond using a resource management platform to improve staff management, what else can you do? We’ve got some expert advice for organizations and individual managers.
Train managers
Earlier, we highlighted the key role that managers play in business success. People leave bad managers. But, often, managers don’t get the support they need to do better. Provide training for staff managers in all elements of their role:
Remember, there’s a big difference between management and leadership skills – and your managers need both – for their sake and their reports.
Set staff management KPIs
Managers can get so caught up in pursuing their KPIs that performance soars but morale plummets – leading to disengagement, lowering productivity over time, and turnover. It’s counterproductive.
Managers should have staff management KPIs that give them permission to balance performance goals with engagement, recruitment, and retention objectives. For example:
Use technology and data
It’s worth saying again, technology can greatly enhance staff management processes – whether that’s resource management software to help plan capacity and optimize resource utilization, or HR tools to streamline recruitment and performance management.
Really get to know your resources
Employee motivation and engagement are critical for maintaining high levels of productivity and job satisfaction. That requires you, as a manager, to understand what makes your team members tick. Then you can match people with opportunities that align with their interests and career aspirations, increasing engagement and performance, while upskilling your team.
Worried if you upskill people too much they’ll leave? Make that a point of pride – that you’re the manager who unlocks potential and helps people progress in the business.
Lead, don’t manage
Instead of simply overseeing tasks and ensuring compliance, focus on inspiring and motivating your team with the bigger picture.
Effective leadership involves setting a clear vision and inspiring your team to work towards shared goals. It means guiding your team through challenges, creating psychological safety for people to try and fail, and coaching them to find their own solutions.
It isn’t always easy – and that’s why many staff managers prefer to just ‘manage’ their team. But strong leaders inspire innovation, dedication, and loyalty – which can translate into bottom-line business results. So it’s worth rising to the challenge.
Advocate for yourself
Staff managers are stressed! Advocate for yourself to get the training and support you need to excel at your job. Seek out training opportunities to enhance your skills in leadership, communication, interpersonal skills, delegation, prioritization, conflict management, and more.
Advocating for your own training will develop your skills and confidence in your role, deliver better outcomes for your team, and set a positive example for your colleagues, showing the importance of lifelong learning and professional development.
By implementing these staff management best practices, companies and individual managers can build a productive, motivated, and satisfied workforce – one that drives success and business growth.
If you want to know:
You want Runn.
Find out how Runn makes staff management easier.
Or start your 14-day free trial today to explore Runn for yourself.
