Shaping HR Human Resources Staffing Within A Company

The process of emplying staff for a company, organization or department is quite an easy one, so long as there is no shortage of qualified candidates to fill the required positions. But with many people currently unemployed the candidate pool is bigger now than it has been for a long time.

But what if the positions your company need to fill are in the HR human resources department? How would HR staffing be handled differently from the staffing procedure in other departments? Remember that HR is not a production-oriented, revenue generating department.

New services or products are not created in the HR department. Human Resources' sole function is to manage people, develop procedures and policies and maintain the benefit program of the company or organisation. The hiring manager needs to decide how many employees are needed so as to have an effective HR human resources department.

Human Resources HR Staffing Ratio

A general rule for deciding on the optimum number of staff can be to have one HR person for, say, every 100 staff. This has been an industry standard but one that can and does vary from industry to industry. That's because some companies need more hands-on involvement of their HR human resources department in their employees' needs and daily activities. This ratio is often used for the purpose of estimating minimum staffing requirements for fulfilling the basic human resources needs of an organization.

This also illustrates that in some cases HR departments are either over-staffed or under-staffed. Another assumption is that the company has fully trained and qualified hunab resources professionals to address all of their needs.

This guideline for HR staffing can also be affected by some other factors like:

• How many locations.
• Geographical distribution of employees.
• Outsourced functions.
• The complexity of strategic mission and objectives for the HR.
• The employees' sophistication.

Furthermore there can be industry considerations when determining HR staffing requirements. Some industries require higher levels of HR support because of regulatory oversight and the extent of record-keeping and reporting.

HR Expectations

A little known variable in the decision concerning HR staffing is the expected level of service from employees and management. These service levels can be grouped as either full-range or as maintenance. At the maintenance level the human resources department's primary concern is with maintenance, administrative tasks and compliance.

The department is often reactive to the legal changes and the management of employees' needs. The full range level broadens the human resources activities to include development and implementation of programs that are going to support the overall growth of the company, thus affecting productivity and employee relations. The human resources department should be pro-active to minimize possible risks to the organization, while it drives for performance improvement.