Got Staff? - Page 1

The key to staffing success is developing a strategic plan that takes into account long-term objectives as well as short-term needs. Rather than just responding to situations at the last minute, you can hire more proactively.

Here are some steps to help you gain more control over your personnel situation:

Add it up. At least once a year, you should analyze your team’s workload. Using a spreadsheet, estimate how many work hours your employees’ activities require each month. For instance, network security issues might take 20 hours, software installations and upgrades 40 hours, and so on.

Be sure to list recurring projects, such as a biannual assessment of IT needs throughout the company, as well as special one-time initiatives that may be ahead.

To gain a better idea of typical workloads, evaluate employee activity reports and talk to managers in your group. Try to form as accurate a picture as possible of common demands, but don’t worry if you can’t gather precise numbers on hours devoted to each task; you can still generate a meaningful analysis with estimates.

Next, consider the resources available to meet those needs by calculating how many hours your employees work each month—one programmer working nine hours a day, with 20 workdays in a month, can put in a total of 180 hours, for instance.

If your applications development group has four programmers working the same number of hours, you’d have access to 720 “person hours” each month. Yet, if you have an average of 790 hours worth of work in upcoming months, you won’t have enough people to get the assignments done, particularly should unexpected demands arise.

Strategize. Before you place a job advertisement for more programmers, think carefully about the appropriate staffing solution. A consistent pattern of work exceeding the person hours of available employees is a good indicator that you need additional full-time personnel.

Otherwise, if workloads fluctuate or there is only a short-term need for assistance, consider bringing in project IT professionals. For instance, your company may be planning to implement a new database application, which will require training and extra technical support as employees master the basics.

The staffing requirements of a typical IT department can quickly change due to new technologies and expectations, so make sure you’re not rushing to automatically fill vacant positions. There may be a more pressing need to add personnel in other areas, create new roles within the team or restructure the old positions.