Staffing management: who is in charge?
Agathe Placet
Content manager
May 3, 2023
5 min
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The staffing manager is an individual or group of individuals with a strategic role, at the crossroads of all issues of a service company.
There are just as many processes and ways of organizing Staffing than companies that practice it.
And for good reason: staffing is primordial for companies organized in project mode.
In consulting firms, engineering companies or even digital services companies, the challenges behind staffing are enormous:
These challenges are therefore largely based on the people in charge of staffing. So, we asked ourselves the question: Who are the ones who bear the major responsibility for staffing in service companies?
One or more employees are hired full time to manage staffing at the company level. Often, these profiles deal with a defined perimeter. Depending on the size of the company, there is one person in charge of staffing or one person per BU (approximately 1 full-time manager for 150 people). This role can be overseen by: HR (Artefact), Operations (Capgemini Invent), Finance (Geometry), a BU Director or an Associate.
The staffing manager benefits from a 360° visibility on the challenges of staffing, which will provide him with a expertise For the performance operational and financial, but also on the skills to be had in terms of human resources.
He will thus know how to arbitrate perfectly and resolve conflicts of staffing.
The full-time staffing manager must succeed in be heard by all stakeholders to avoid friction and frustration. Moreover, he is not Not on the ground, it may have a A slightly distant vision unrelated to the difficulties managers encounter.
This mode of operation assumes that one or more employees are responsible, at various levels, for the management of staffing in the company (in addition to the missions on their job description). Generally, as in the case of full-time employment, these profiles deal with a defined scope, often less than 100 consultants.
The manager is very familiar with the sector, stakes customers and the skills expected. It is daily in contact with his team and of their operational challenges. And this mode does not suggest No recruitment additional for this position
This mission requires a strong investment in addition. of the initial operational job description and this Management time is not billed on the missions.
The employee is not trained in HR challenges, it is more difficult for him to be proactive about expectations and desires consultants ahead of staffing decisions.
The establishment of a cross-staffing mechanics between the different business units is more complex, because the people in charge of staffing do not always have visibility on the other departments.
Under this mode of organization, project managers and managers assign consultants directly to the projects for which they are responsible, according to their needs at the moment. They select employees within their business units and create their project teams independently.
If there is strife On resources to be staffed, project managers try to find a agreement between them. As a last resort, requests go directly to the managing director who decides.
Project managers have great freedom as for the choice of their staffings, because they have a very good field knowledge and know exactly what resources to mobilize.
Staffing is decentralized, will be conducive to increased efficiency and the budget envelope properly managed.
This mode reduces tensions on available resources, because project managers easily mediate conflicts in their team
This mode may result in a Wild staffing and create voltages between project managers, but not only, if the resources allocated to the project are not not efficient enough, it can create a customer dissatisfaction.
In addition, if the staffing is not standardized enough, some project managers could circumvent The staffing tool and thus, make staffing management intricate.
In the ESN, sales representatives and business engineers are in charge of staffing. They manage the entire chat channel with the customer.
They offer profiles and CVs to their clients, hand in hand with the human resources department. Their role is linked to all the entities of the company, so they have a great need for visibility.
Sales representatives are granted great autonomy in choosing the resources to be mobilized on missions. They can Respond much more quickly aux solicitations customers (no resource requests, no loss of time, so no more projects won).
This mode creates a strong link between the business department and the human resources department since they work hand in hand to position internal or external resources.
One employee can be mobilized by several salespeople at the same time, it can create conflicts between commercial establishments.
Once the project is launched, the salesperson does not follow the progress of the project and does not make management decisions: the responsibility lies with the project manager.
The human resources department is focused on recruitment rather than support on a mission.
In this mode, one or more people in the company (small size) are responsible for managing staffing in addition to their activity, for a limited period of time (6 to 18 months). This mode is based on the”devolving” and the designated officials must be genuine Swiss knives.
This mode promotes the development of skills collaborators on human resources and staffing issues.
The designated manager Knows his terrain well, the sector and the customer issues.
The fact that the responsibility for staffing is changing hands, with Passations on the workstation every 6-18 months, can create a lack of stability.
Human resources support can be less qualitative And less staffing Efficient, because the designated employees must also take care of their initial missions.
The appointment of full-time staffing managers is an important task, he is in charge ofensure planning as appropriate as possible, and mobilize the the most suitable resources for a project.
It is a major role in Achievement of goals that guarantee performance and competitiveness.
Do you want to go deeper into the subject? We have lots of resources at your disposal to help you go further.
In addition to this subject, find our Staffing management: 4 decrypted processes.
Also discover our guides, templates and checklists in the Resources tab.
See you soon at Napta!
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