Question

What criteria would you suggest using for assessing the staffing alternatives related to dealing with employee shortages and surpluses?​

Answer 1

Some of the staffing alternatives while dealing with employee shortages or surpluses could be:

1. The amount of flexible employees in the workforce: Keep employees flexible, so that they can be rotated or shuffled across departments.

2. Training and professional skill of employees: Cross-train employees so that they can be valuable whenever and wherever you have a shortage.

3. The mix of temporary and permanent employees: Keep temporary staff in the workforce, so that they can be removed from the payroll when the company is going through a tough phase.

4. Employee sentiment: Often a surplus or shortage may be due to mass recruiting owing to expected company growth or mass attrition because of some bad news or bad behavior. Understanding the Happiness index may help the organization plan for future crisis.