Strategic Staffing

Rating:
Summary: Valuable Tool for Business--easy to use
Review: As corporate leaders look into the future, developing strategic plans, human resources must be a vital component. Without people, most organizations would be unable to meet their objectives, pay their bills, and satisfy their owners. Many corporations have difficulty getting properly organized and filling positions with the right people even in present-day terms. Looking into the future, even a few months into the future, is beyond the scope of most human resource departments. They're too busy scrambling to address current problems.

There are three components necessary for solid strategic staffing-the planning for the company's future workforce needs. First, you need a CEO and senior leadership team that is future-focused. These key people must be good planners, with concern about all the resources they will need in the years ahead-including people. Second, you need human resource professionals who can business-speak, who can understand the strategic plans being drawn by those top executives. These professionals must be able to determine what kinds of people will be needed-when, where, and why. Third, you need a good tool to forecast workforce supply and demand, be flexible in response to changing plans, and be highly usable. "Strategic Staffing" is that tool.

Written by a human resource strategist with decades of experience under his belt, this book has it all-in writing and on an accompanying CD-ROM. Included in the easy-to-read pages are forms, examples, and diagnostics to help readers evaluate their own workforce strategies and preparedness. The CD-ROM includes templates, graphs, formulas, Excel spreadsheets, and even slide presentations to convey the vital message to others in the organization.

The book is organized into four sections: Setting the Context, Developing the Strategic Staffing Process, Implementing and Supporting Your Strategic Staffing Process, and Beyond Staffing Plans: Analyzing and Applying the Results. Three Appendices add more value, addressing frequently asked questions and providing guidance to using the extra material on the CD-ROM. A glossary and an index contribute to the usefulness of the volume.

The sixteen chapters of the book are well-defined, enabling the reader to work from the Table of Contents to move to sections where help might be found for specific problems. Readers will learn about how to make strategic staffing a part of the organization, how to define staffing levels, and how to make the whole thing work. Included are chapters about how to involve other mangers (buy-in is important) and how to use the web for staff acquisition over the long term. Solid costing information brings a cold sense of reality to the picture. The cost of not doing what this book advises can be considerably higher than following the author's helpful guidelines.

Bonus: The book's type size and design makes it easy to read and work with.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful!
Review: Human resources strategist Thomas P. Bechet provides a comprehensive guide to planning your staffing. He includes a CD with PowerPoint slide presentations, adaptable Excel spreadsheets, and assessment and evaluation forms. The book has ample examples and case studies of how to set up staffing, and tons of charts, graphs and formulas. But, you cannot apply his models and practices without this detailed hands-on workbook of his scorecard strategy, where you enter relevant data in a matrix that provides staffing direction. Warning: if your basic assumptions are wrong or if your situation changes quickly, you could take a wrong turn, so proceed carefully. While this is not a fun read - in fact, it can seem convoluted - Bechet's intent is practicality, not recreation. This is a hardcore resource for hiring decision-makers. So we suggest that you pour yourself a stiff cup of coffee, grab a thick notepad and muscle up to the staffing task with serious, strategic intent.

Rating:
Summary: A Practioner's Guide
Review: Tom Bechet has set a new standard for workforce planning books. He walks the reader through his practical user guide to think about about workforce planning as solving a business issue.The result of following Tom's well articulated "strategic staffing" process will help enable the business to meet it's strategic goals by understanding the "people implications" as part of their strategic business planning process. Workforce planning becomes "helping the business to solve business talent issues"! The book systematically walks the reader from step one all the way through the strategic staffing process, and he even includes powerpoint slides to review with your organization and spreadsheets that will assist in capturing your organizational data! The book is a terrific toolkit for staffing/HR professionals.

Rating:
Summary: A Practioner's Guide
Review: Tom Bechet has set a new standard for workforce planning books. He walks the reader through his practical user guide to think about about workforce planning as solving a business issue.The result of following Tom's well articulated "strategic staffing" process will help enable the business to meet it's strategic goals by understanding the "people implications" as part of their strategic business planning process. Workforce planning becomes "helping the business to solve business talent issues"! The book systematically walks the reader from step one all the way through the strategic staffing process, and he even includes powerpoint slides to review with your organization and spreadsheets that will assist in capturing your organizational data! The book is a terrific toolkit for staffing/HR professionals.