Strategic Staffing: A Comprehensive System for Effective Workforce Planning [Hardcover]

Thomas P. Bechet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 14, 2008

Many organizations understand the benefits of a longer-term approach to staffing: reduced turnover and hiring costs, improved efficiency and morale, and ultimately greater profits. Unfortunately, traditional approaches to strategic staffing are often more effective on paper than in the workplace. "Strategic Staffing: Second Edition" shows how to identify staffing needs and opportunities through qualitative and quantitative measures, and presents several effective, nontraditional approaches to strategic staffing. Bechet includes factors as diverse as promotions, retirements, 'decruiting' (the active management of staff out of an organization), termination, and even retention.Featuring full case studies and dozens of examples, the book is both enlightening and practical. And to help readers create their own staffing plans, the CD-ROM is a trove of invaluable tools. Integrating a strategic approach to staffing can result in reduced turnover and hiring costs, improved efficiency and morale, and ultimately greater profits. This book is a detailed, process-oriented guide that offers all the tools staffing professionals need.

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Co-published with SHRM.

Many organizations understand the benefits of a longer-term approach to staffing: reduced turnover and hiring costs, improved efficiency and morale, and ultimately greater profits. Unfortunately, traditional approaches to strategic staffing are often more effective on paper than in the workplace.

Strategic Staffing: Second Edition shows how to identify staffing needs and opportunities through qualitative and quantitative measures, and presents several effective, nontraditional approaches to strategic staffing. Bechet includes factors as diverse as promotions, retirements, "decruiting" (the active management of staff out of an organization), termination, and even retention. Featuring full case studies and dozens of examples, the book is both enlightening and practical. And to help readers create their own staffing plans, the CD-ROM is a trove of invaluable tools, including:

• PowerPoint(TM) slide presentations • Customizable Excel(TM) spreadsheets * Assessment and evaluation forms • Calculations and analyses • Sample staffing plans, and much more.

Integrating a strategic approach to staffing can result in reduced turnover and hiring costs, improved efficiency and morale, and ultimately greater profits. This book is a detailed, process-oriented guide that offers all the tools staffing professionals need.

About the Author

Thomas P. Bechet (Wayne, IL) is founder of Bechet Consulting LLC and a specialist in human resources strategies. He teaches in the University of Michigan's Executive Education Program.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: AMACOM; 2nd edition (May 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814409385
• ISBN-13: 978-0814409381
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #385,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but can be tedious, July 18, 2008

By 

J (Earth) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strategic Staffing: A Comprehensive System for Effective Workforce Planning (Hardcover)

This book is packed with good information and it's one of the better books out there for helping someone understand the strategic staffing/workforce planning process. But, it's also tedious. I've been working my way through it for weeks now and I just can't seem to get through it (and, it's not even that large of a book!). The author could trim 25% of the book's heft and the result would be a better, more streamlined read. For example, the early chapters continually reiterate the same points and the author has a frustrating habit of describing a particular technique in detail only to tell you that it is the wrong way to do it at the end. Since I've been taking notes througout, this is particulary irritating because I have to unlearn what I've just read. While in can empathize with the author - the topic is far from a sexy one - the prose just lulls me to sleep.

That's too bad, because the author has great advice and offers a lot of effective tools for performing, step-by-step, the strategic staffing process.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful framework--but a more specific, less jargon filled tool would have been better, May 9, 2010

By 

Robin (Bethesda, Moldova, Republic of) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Strategic Staffing: A Comprehensive System for Effective Workforce Planning (Hardcover)

It was tough to assign the rating to Strategic Staffing: A Comprehensive System for Effective Workforce Planning. The book gets its three stars because the overall framework it provides is enormously helpful to a reader who is savvy enough to customize it to the business whose staffing is being planned. Had it been more specific, more insightful and more readable, it would have gotten a higher rating. Unfortunately the book is so long on models (some of which graph the extremely obvious) and jargon, and so short on specifics that I can't imagine handing it to any but the most experienced and insightful Human Resource manager--someone who knows his or her business inside and out. I would never recommend this book to an undergraduate or graduate business or human resources student whose on the ground experience is limited. The book generalizes far too much and needs the balance provided by experience.

What Strategic Staffing: A Comprehensive System for Effective Workforce Plan, does well is to give a business planner, or HR executive, a place to start when developing the workforce plan for a large business, preferably one where labor needs and sources are predictable and skills are measurable. If you are planning the staffing of a retail organization, an IT area or a restaurant chain, particularly one with a history that can be analyzed, this would be a good tool.

One reason this book only works for experienced people is that it provides no guidance on the challenge of gathering the information, gaining leadership support, gathering information on the cost of tactics such as outside recruiting, internal development etc. Casestudies are included in the back of the book but these studies are so bereft of detail that they make the decisions made look much too simple-- One has no idea of the potential risks involved in making these decisions.

What makes the book unpleasant to use (even for experienced people) is the author's sometimes convoluted academic writing style lightened by absolutely nothing from real life. There are no examples of successes, failures or situations that may be tough to analyze. The book goes from the basic to the difficult. For example, large amounts of space are devoted to defining what a business strategy is and is not. Here's a typical quote "Staffing-strategies are longer term, directional plans of action that describe what an organization is actually going to do to direct staffing needs across all planning periods throughout its planning horizon." Yikes! If you don't already know this, its fair to say that you probably aren't knowledgeable enough to be writing a staffing plan.

In spite the writing style, Strategic Staffing provides a kind of skeleton of a useful staffing plan. If you are faced with the critical assignment of developing a very high level plan for a large organization, Strategic Staffing is a very good place to find the kind of basic framework that will reassure senior business people that you have a handle on staffing. Don't stop with this book though. If you do your audience will be shaking their heads at your lack of insight into the opportunities and risks of their specific business.