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Tip #5 to Improve Employee Engagement

If you work in an industry where staffing determines the quality of the day for your employees, encourage your leaders to demystify staffing by sharing a comprehensive staffing plan with their teams.  

We all know our workload can feel overwhelming when we do not have enough people on the team to complete the work. The workload feels worse when we believe our bosses are (1) intentionally under-staffing the team or (2) not taking action to address the workload. A thoughtful and intentional staffing plan is the fastest way to demystify staffing issues and begin addressing workload frustrations.

Tip #5: Ask Leaders To Share Staffing Plans with Their Teams

A few critical elements for leaders to include in the staffing plan are:
  • Clear definition of "appropriate staffing" (the definition should answer the question, "How many people do we need to complete this amount of work?")
  • Total # of vacancies and status on filling the vacancies
  • Plans for bringing on interim / part-time support 
  • Plans for floating full-time staff to different areas of the operation
  • Plans for requesting overtime to fill holes in the schedule
  • Plans for eliminating non-value added work or low-value work (HBR. "Stop Doing Low-Value Work")
  • Requests for candidate referrals
NOTE: We caution leaders on providing exact dates when staffing will be "fixed" due to the number of variables that may impact actual staffing needs (e.g., unexpected turnover, additional volume).

For new leaders to your organization or leaders recently promoted from a non-leadership role, understanding staffing must be a First 90-Day activity (#AccelerateYourLearning, #SecureEarlyWins).  We recommend new leaders and recently promoted leaders partner with HR and more-experienced peer leaders to develop their staffing plans for their teams.

Contact IMC at info@imc.consulting if you would like to learn more about our employee engagement or talent management support
 
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