Affects of the Organizational Strategy on Staffing

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who are in the best position to anticipate future business changes" (1993). The HR staff plays a key role in determining how the staffing strategy aligns with the business strategy. Knowing this information will ensure that the right employee is selected for the job, which will decrease job turnover. This is done by understanding the future job requirements and the particulars of each job. The knowledge gained by this process will help HR staffing to create well-rounded staffing plan. If a staffing plan is not constructed, then the wrong candidate can be hired for the position. This usually occurs 75 percent of the time when a staffing plan is lacking. When employees are in the wrong positions they tend to get frustrated with the job, which leads to high turnover rates.

Companies like Valero Energy are realizing the importance of staffing plans. In reviewing retention issues, they discovered the need to have a staffing plan that attracts the right types of candidates. In 2007, the economy produced a difficult period to find and attract employees that match the organizations business strategy. In order to combat this problem, they developed a staffing strategy that grasped the company’s "strong corporate culture" (Weldon, 2007), which stressed hiring people that "employees like to be around" (Weldon, 2007). In order to attract this specific type of individual, the company offered competitive benefits and salaries that competitors were lacking. This staffing strategy increased the availability of qualified applicants that were the right fit for the company.

Causes

The main cause of retention issues with hiring is the lack of a staffing plan that reflects the company’s business strategy. The majority of businesses are quick to hire employees to fill the need for employees. When this occurs, it omits the applicant’s qualifications and personality fit with the organization’s culture and business plan. This type of hiring practice leads to a high turnover rate and cost the company around five times the salary of the lost employee (Hiring the Right Employees, 2010). The business strategy needs to incorporate the ideal employees that will make the business successful. This will help to guide the staffing plan in the hiring and selection process for the right employee.

Another issue is not hiring the person that is the best fit for the organization’s culture. Just because an employee is the most qualified individual, does not mean the employee will be a successful asset to the organization. If the employee is unhappy with their current work environment, they will look for a new position elsewhere. This will leave the company wondering why they have a high turnover rate. The fact is 66 to 75 percent of employees are currently dissatisfied with their current position (Hiring the Right Employees, 2010).

Some businesses do have excellent benefits, but do not utilize them effectively to attract and retain top qualified individuals. A company’s business strategy can be to offer great benefits, but a company cannot magnetize these benefits as a staffing tool without effectively advertising them to potential employees. Additionally, if a staffing plan lacks benefits, it can cause high turnover rates (Weldon, 2007).

High turnover rates with staffing can result in ineffective business planning in what types of candidates will be the best fit for the organization. According to Heneman and Judge (2009), when a business decides on a strategy, it intertwines with the staffing plan (pp. 21-24). A HR staffing plan cannot exist without the business strategy taken into consideration and vise versa. When a company fails to take this into consideration when selecting and hiring employees, then all sorts of retention issues can be found. For example, the promotion of low-level employees into high-level positions they are not qualified for can hurt the company. The lack of leadership and the undue promotions can discourage current employees and cause them to look for employment elsewhere.

Solutions

The best solution to increase retention rates with staffing selections is to have a staffing plan in place that reflects the organization’s strategy and mission. These two components should be hand in hand. If these components are brought together, then the characteristics of the ideal employee will be known before the selection process starts. This will increase the chances of only reviewing the most qualified employees with personalities that match the work environment.

An experience I have had with this is the downsizing of the engineering department at my prior employer. The employer warned the engineers’ months ahead of time that a certain amount of employees would be let go do to lose of contract. The HR system utilized a percentage of the affected individuals to fill pending or future positions within the next few months. The outcome was a smaller percentage of engineers being laid off. In addition, the company was able to utilize some engineers’ company experience by offering them other positions that required minimal retraining. The company was able to accomplish this by knowing their staffing needs and the businesses strategy for the upcoming year. Since the company had the insight to look out for its employees, retention rates remained high because employees did not have to fear being laid off as much after seeing the compassion the company had for its employees.

Another solution is to identify what issues cause high turnover rates when it comes to staffing. These problems should be brought to light by analysis exit surveys. The data obtained from these surveys and be used to create a staffing plan that reduces turnover rates, while boosting the business’ mission. This problem was seen in the Tanglewood cases. The company needed to higher employees because of high turnover rates in the lower level positions. However, the owners wanted to lower these rates by trying to hire new employees that match their mission of customers first and teamwork always. By revamping their staffing process to hire employees that matched their business strategy, Tanglewood was able to hire employees that stayed with the company for longer periods versus previous hires.

A solution to align the business strategy of providing for employees with the staffing plan is to advertise the benefits given to the employees. This can attract the high level of employees because they can see what the company has to offer. In addition, it can show that the company cares for its employees. These factors can lower the employee turnover rates because it boosts the organizational culture while promoting a desirable place to work. This type of strategy is seen in Google’s