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How to Develop a Staffing Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you’re looking for a new and effective way to improve how your team and your business operate, a staffing plan may be the solution.

Staffing plans can provide a framework for all of your labor needs so you can be sure your business has the right number of skilled employees to meet the demands of your market — both now and in the months and years to come.

In this article, we discuss how to develop your own staffing plan and the software that can help get you there.

Key takeaways

A staffing plan allows you to look at your current workforce and compare it to future goals so that you can make sure you have the right number of people with the right skills exactly when you need them.
Planning ahead prevents “panic hiring” and can help you save thousands of dollars in training and turnover costs.
A good staffing plan uses historical data that allows you to predict when you’ll need extra help and ensures that you start recruiting early so you aren’t left understaffed.
Include a section that identifies skill gaps so you have the chance to offer training to your current employees, which is often much cheaper than starting the hiring process from scratch.
Workforce management software can help you track labor costs and employee availability in real-time, making it easier to see if your staffing matches your goals.

What is a staffing plan?
How to develop a staffing plan
Why a staffing plan matters for your bottom line
Tips for putting your staffing plan into practice
Common staffing challenges and how to solve them
Staffing plans for busy restaurants

What is a staffing plan?

A staffing plan is a collection of data points that measure and describe various aspects of the way your business operates, including foundational variables such as work activity, labor needs, and the time and money spent to get the job done.

With that information in hand, management (and your HR department, if you have one) can take steps to identify and predict:

The current state of your workforce management
Regular and recurring labor needs
Skills your employees will need (both personally and for the business as a whole)
Future labor needs and goals
The steps your business will need to take to fulfill those goals

The process of developing a staffing plan can reveal all of that — and more. But how do you go about creating such a plan?

Read on to find out.

How to develop a staffing plan

1) Review business goals

The foundation of a good staffing plan rests on the goals and strategies you have for your business.

These milestones provide direction to your organization as a whole and give your HR department and management a baseline with which they can start formulating important questions about the business, including:

What are the highest-priority goals for the next 12 months?
What departmental goals do we need to set to support the larger purpose?
Do we need to reorganize or realign?
How can human resource planning support the various levels of our organizational strategy?

The answers to these questions — and a thorough review and evaluation of business goals — will make up the framework of your staffing plan as it starts to take shape.

2) Look for conflicts and contributions

Once you’ve settled on the goals you want to use moving forward, the next step in developing a staffing plan is to look for conflicts and contributions.

Take a step back from the goals themselves and try to identify things that might help your business reach those goals. At the same time, try to identify things that might hinder your business along the way.

Conflicts and contributions can exist inside and outside your organization, so don’t limit where you look.

For example, your business may be affected by:

A tight labor market
Novel competitor activities
Laws in your area
Changes to responsibilities within your operation

Each of these could serve as a conflict or contribution to the way your team works and influence both the supply of talent you have available and the staffing plan you build to manage it.

3) Define where your business is now

Developing a staffing plan is like working backward on a road map: You put a pin in your destination and work your way backward, identifying places where you might slow down or speed up along your route until you reach your starting point.

In this case, your destination is achieving the various goals you’ve set. The slowdowns and speed-ups along your route are the conflicts and contributions you identified in step two. That leaves one variable undefined: your starting point.

After establishing where you want to go and the factors that affect your progress, it’s time to define where your business is now.

As you look at the current state of your workforce, make note of details like:

Resources available
Staff available
Employee skills
Employee knowledge
Your business’s organizational chart
The competencies your team needs to function

The data you gather in this step can help your business get a clear picture of where the operation is at right now and help you define the starting point of the staffing plan moving forward.

So, at this point, you’ve got a destination (the goals you want to achieve), an origin (the current state of your business), and the potential conflicts and contributions that could pop up along the way.

Now, it’s time to start planning how your business is going to move from start to finish.

4) Decide what you need to accomplish your goals

At this point in the process, it’s time to decide what you need to accomplish your goals.

Think of it like preparing for a road trip. You’ll need to choose a route, decide which vehicle you want to take, and finally, throw in some clothes, a bag or suitcase to put them in, and maybe some snacks and drinks to keep you fueled during the journey.

You can use the same idea to figure out what your business needs on the road to achieving the goals you set in step one.

Make a list of everything your business might need for the “trip” — whether it’s available to you at the moment or not.

Include things like:

Physical resources
Skills
Knowledge
Money
Time
Support

Once you have a list of the things you need, it’s time to separate that list into what you have and what you don’t have.

5) Figure out what’s missing

Next, go through everything on your “needs” list and determine what’s missing.

For example, you may have decided you’ll need a team of 10 to accomplish your goals. But maybe your business only has eight employees right now. Obviously, you know you’re going to need to hire two more employees before you start out.

6) Build a staffing plan to fill in the gaps

Now that you have information for all of the variables — goals, conflicts and contributions, starting point, needs, and shortfalls — it’s time to build a staffing plan to fill in the gaps.

At this point, you’ve done most of the work already. You just need to map out how your business is going to make sure it has the resources necessary to make the journey as successful as possible.

Then, all that’s left is to start the engine and put your staffing plan into action.

Why a staffing plan matters for your bottom line

A mistake that many owners and managers make is viewing their staffing plan as nothing more than a human resources strategy, when it’s also a financial strategy. Here’s how a staffing plan can affect your bottom line.

Imagine that one of your team members quits unexpectedly or business suddenly picks up, and you “panic hire” the first person who applies. Hiring in this way often leads to poor culture fit and high turnover, which can result in thousands of dollars lost to recruiting and training.

A solid staffing plan prevents this type of loss, helps you stay ahead of the curve, and gives you the freedom to hire with intention rather than desperation.

In addition, a staffing plan can also help you control overstaffing, which, in itself, can be a significant drain on your bottom line.

By examining your data and sticking to your staffing plan, you can ensure that you have just enough team members on payroll to get the job done efficiently, but not so many that people are standing around with nothing to do.

Tips for putting your staffing plan into practice

Recruit to attract top talent

Once your staffing plan is ready, it’s time to find the right people to fill the gaps. Every business will have its own way of hunting for talent, but the secret to success is staying true to your specific model.

That may include rehiring an employee who worked with you in the past, checking back with previous applicants, or promoting someone from within your existing team.

To find top talent, try hosting a virtual meetup or focus on niche job boards that cater to your specific industry. It can also be extremely helpful to sharpen your interview skills and verify that all job descriptions are up to date and as clear as possible.

Bottom line: Always keep your business goals front and center during the hiring process.

Hire for the best fit

Hiring a new employee is about much more than just picking a name out of a hat. The best fit should have the right mix of technical skills and a personality that fits well with the rest of the team and your company culture.

Once you find the best fit, however, the work isn’t over. Build into your staffing plan an onboarding process to get new team members up to speed, as well as guidelines for pay, hours, and benefits.

With such a plan in place, you can ensure that every new team member helps your business grow instead of slowing it down.

Focus on employee retention

Building a great team is hard work, but keeping them together can be even more difficult. High turnover can be a major drain on your time, energy, and budget. To combat this, make employee retention a top priority of your staffing plan.

Within the plan, discuss aspects of the job, such as leadership style, autonomy, perks you may offer, and performance reviews to keep everyone on track.

With such details already laid out, you can focus on creating the best workplace possible.

Common staffing plan challenges and how to solve them

Seasonal swings

For many businesses, the staffing needs in December look nothing like the staffing needs in July. A staffing plan uses historical data to show you exactly when to start your seasonal recruiting so you aren’t shorthanded during the busy times of the year.

Skill gaps

Sometimes you may have enough team members, but they don’t have the right skills necessary for your evolving business. For example, maybe the business is in the process of moving to a new POS system or rolling out a delivery service.

A good staffing plan identifies the skills your employees will need in the next few months and gives you time to train them or hire new team members who already have those skills.

Unexpected turnover

A comprehensive staffing plan should always include a possible succession strategy that you can implement in case someone moves, changes careers, or heads back to school.

With such a strategy in place, you’ll always have an idea of which of your employees could step into a leadership role if someone leaves the business unexpectedly.

Workforce management integration

In the past, many staffing plans were complicated paper documents or spreadsheets that weren’t very user-friendly. Improvements in workforce management (WFM) software have changed all that.

With WFM software, you can see your staffing plan in real-time, compare your planned labor hours against actual hours worked, and track employee availability and certification automatically.

Plus, when your staffing plan is integrated with your scheduling tool, you can see instantly if you’re meeting your goals. For example, if your plan says that you need three senior servers for Friday nights, the software can alert you if you try to schedule three trainees instead.

Professional development

A staffing plan isn’t just about hiring new people. It’s also about developing the people you already have.

When you look at your future goals, ask yourself, “Can my current team members do this?” If the answer is “no,” that doesn’t mean you have to hire all new people who can.

Instead, your staffing plan can include training that will build the skills of your current team. Such training/professional development is often much cheaper than finding, hiring, and training a brand new team member from scratch.

Staffing plans for busy restaurants

The restaurant industry is notorious for its employee turnover, but that’s just the nature of running a busy food-service establishment.

You can help cut down on turnover chaos by building a staffing plan for your business. This plan may be able to help you focus on hiring for skill, fit, and longevity instead of just finding someone who can do the job today and be gone tomorrow.

In fact, hiring the right person based on your labor needs and your staffing plan can help your restaurant develop a reputation for quality service.

And that doesn’t just come from your servers. Everyone from the head chef to the dishwashers and food runners can help your restaurant stand out from the crowd.

But it all starts with developing a staffing plan that can help you find exactly what your food-service business needs to get ahead.

Manage your staffing plan with Sling

Once you’ve built a staffing plan that’s right for your business, it’s time to put it into action. That involves managing everything from the hiring and firing process to the way you organize and optimize your team.

The Sling suite of tools can help you simplify and streamline all of that and give your business unprecedented control over the finer and more difficult points of workforce management, including:

Try Sling for free today to see how it can help you take your staffing plan off the paper and make it into a reality.

And, for even more free resources to help you manage your business better, organize and schedule your team, and track and calculate labor costs, visit GetSling.com today.

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This content is for informational purposes and is not intended as legal, tax, HR, or any other professional advice. Please contact an attorney or other professional for specific advice.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I update my staffing plan?

For most businesses, it’s best to update the staffing plan at least once per quarter. Sit down and look at your goals versus your actual employee numbers. Are you growing faster than expected? Did a specific department fall behind?

Examining your operation in this way helps you account for any changes your business may encounter during those 12 weeks and allows you to match your hiring with your actual needs.

That said, business moves fast in the real world, so if you land a new contract, open a second location, or lose key personnel, don’t wait for the next quarter. Update your plan immediately to keep your team balanced and your operations running smoothly.

Does a small business really need a staffing plan?

Absolutely! It may not be as complex as one for a medium or large business, but even a very basic plan can help a small team excel.

Think of it this way: When you only have a few employees, every single person counts. One bad hire or a sudden vacancy can disrupt everything from customer service to team morale.

But, by mapping out your needs early, you avoid the trap of panic hiring when things get busy. A solid plan helps you spend your hard-earned budget on the right roles at the right time, and ensures that your small team stays strong and focused.

What is the difference between a staffing plan and a schedule?

A staffing plan is a “big picture” strategy that looks months or even years into the future to decide how many team members you need and what skills they should have. Think of it as a blueprint for your workforce.

A schedule, on the other hand, is a “boots on the ground” tool that tells your employees when they work every day of every week.

While the schedule handles the daily details, the staffing plan ensures that you have enough people hired to fill those shifts.

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