The Concept of Staffing in Organisational Psychology: An In-Depth Exploration

INTRODUCTION

The staffing function is one of the main activities of Personnel Psychologists in particular and I/O Psychologists and other trained human resource management experts. The gateway to the organisation is via the staffing activities of the human resource department. It is an important job role that incorporates three distinctive activities.

 

MEANING OF RECRUITMENT, SELECTION AND PLACEMENT

The staffing function apart from being the very first point of contact of all employees with the organisation is one of the oldest human resource functions and it covers three distinct but interrelated issues of recruitment, selection and placement. In fact, staffing as a process went beyond the actual attraction of people, picking among them and placing them on the job. It includes manpower planning and job analysis. 

The following analogy will explain the connection between the staffing processes. The fisherman cannot determine the precise kind of fish other than the fact that he may have behind his mind what type, size or quality of fish he will desire to have. Just the same, he will cast the net into the sea and will likely come up with a wide variety of fishes (tilapia or shark; harvestable and fingerlings), crabs, prawns and snakes perhaps. At the bank, the fisherman will settle down to pick out of the lot the fishes that meet his set mode. 

Recruitment starts with identifying the right spot of the river to cast the net, casting and bringing the net to the bank. Selection is about what is done to disallow the shark and or snake of a worker from sneaking into the organisation as well as weeding out obviously unwanted crabs and prawns which will only be useful in another context.

Recruitment

This is not exactly the same as selection. In fact, recruitment simply means the process of seeking and attracting a large pool of likely knowledge, skills, talents and experiences for consideration for appointment; that is, casting and bringing the content of the net to the embankment. This is done through advertisement in various media, using newspaper pages, professional, referrals, word of mouth, journals, magazines, employment centres, scouting, internet platforms and unsolicited application. Thus recruitment is only one of the steps involved in staffing Selection. Selection on the other hand means determining among the so-recruited, the best possible hand for the position advertised. 

Selection is a rigorous exercise involving a number of steps such as an aptitude test, interview, reference check and medical test. It involves a rigorous step which must be taken to screen out the desirable from undesirable (who are bound to apply) job candidates. A single shark of an employee when undetected may draw unremitted pounds of flesh and blood from the organisation. Some organisation doesn’t survive the corruptive and ruining influences of sharks! Placement. This only involves putting the right worker on the right job; that is, putting the round peg in a round hole. Workers must be placed in the job in which they can best perform. This can be achieved;

i. by giving interest/personality inventories to determine the area of interest, aptitude and best fit

ii. by placing the new recruit in all possible job positions, and using his relative performance
rating to place him in his area with the highest rating.

iii. An all-rounded orientation programme.

RECRUITMENT

Every organisation has what could be described as optimum skill requirements. This in reality differs from the available incumbent skills by either plus or minus. Human resource planning is to balance this mix.

Why do organisations always need people? There is no foreclosing the fact that an organisation as an organism, that is a living, dynamic and growing entity will always need people to renew, replace, reinvent and refurbish the organisational processes for optimum performance. In practical and specific terms, organisations need people periodically for the following listed reasons:

i. Because death of employees is sadly inevitable

ii. Dearth of some skills

iii. Poor funding of the training function

iv. Retirement

v. Sack

vi. Turnover

vii. Expansion in business

viii. New technology

ix. Mergers and acquisition

x. Diversity/quota system

xi. New ownership structure

Recruitment is a deliberate effort involving serious and concerted planning and budgeting to anticipate costs at every stage of the recruitment and selection. Planning the recruitment programme involves the following basic components:

1. Job analysis to determine the core activities engaged in by workers; that is the duties, tasks, responsibilities, working conditions and hazards and assessment of human requirements of all jobs including the knowledge, skills, aptitudes, attitudinal dispositions, experiences and other human attributes required to succeed on the job positions delineated in each of the departments and units of the organisation.

2. Manpower planning involves a number of essential and basic processes of organisational analysis to determine whether there are deficiencies of skills, reconciliation of present and future needs through scientific forecasting of the labour market supply and demand matrix, planning human resource actions

3. Recruitment via the announcement of vacancies and finding means of attracting from the labour market those who are qualified and willing to fill the vacancies.

4. Selecting from among the applicants those who have the best probability of succeeding on the jobs

5. Putting selected candidates on the job roles

DECRUITMENT

The other approach to controlling labour supply is decruitment, which is not exactly a pleasant experience for the officer in charge of such a brief. It means working out how to overshoot the optimum manpower requirement of an organisation, which comes by way of overmanning.
The options available to the manager according to Robbins & Coutler (2007) are:

1. Firing. Permanent involuntary termination of an employee’s appointment

2. Layoffs. Temporary involuntary termination of employment may last for a few days, weeks, months or years.

3. Attrition. Not filling openings created by voluntary resignations or normal retirements.

4. Transfers. Moving employees either laterally or downward to reduce intra-organisational supply­demand imbalances and not necessarily costs.

5. Reduced workweeks. Employees work for fewer hours per week, share jobs, perform their jobs on a part-time basis, or work from home.

6. Early retirements. Providing incentives to older and more senior employees for retiring before their normal retirement date.

7. Job sharing. Having employees share one full-time position

SOURCES OF SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE AND APTITUDES

When organisations target recruitment, they are not just aiming at absorbing people. The goal is to infuse knowledge, skills and job-specific aptitudes, attitudes and other unique human attributes that are not readily substitutable by machines and equipment.

In Nigeria there are some veritable sources of these and they include new graduates from primary, secondary and tertiary institutions, useful skills and experiences from the informal labour market sector, employees looking out for new opportunities, NYSC, internees/students on industrial attachment, retirees, returnees from diasporas and other sources.

SOURCES OF RECRUITMENT

These are broadly divided into two; knowledge, skills and aptitudes existing within the organisation (the internal labour market) and those in the external labour market.
Internal labour market. Internal labour market sources include transfer, promotion, job rotation, recommendation of the labour union, training and skill upgrading, job redesigning by either enlargement or slimming, or job reclassification.

External labour market. External labour market sources include unsolicited applications, recommendations of present employees, walk-ins, referrals, employment agents/agencies, redundant workers, labour union centres, poaching, job fairs, scouting, nepotism and leasing.

METHODS OF RECRUITMENT

Recruitment simply means the process of seeking and attracting a large pool of likely skills for consideration for an appointment. The moment it is decided that new hands are required to man vacant job positions in the organisation, various approaches and methodologies can be used to notify and attract the public about available job openings. This is done through advertisement in various media (print and electronic), using employment centres, the internet and unsolicited applications.

SELECTION

Selection on the other hand means determining among the so-recruited, the best possible hand for the position advertised. Selection is a rigorous exercise involving a number of steps. In fact, selection as a process went beyond the actual attraction of people, picking among them and placing them on the job. It includes job analysis, recruitment, and all the steps discussed below. Thus recruitment is only concerned with bringing in applications of prospective job candidates, and the rest of the steps discussed below relates to another stage in the hiring process.

STAGES IN SELECTION

There are at least, depending on the size and nature of the organization, budget and the number of applicants showing interest in the available job position, nine stages in the selection process. They are not necessarily sequential stages but may occur in the order preferred by the organisation.

a. Preliminary interview. Usually exploratory, it is suitably used where the number of applicants is manageable. A preliminary interview further serves as part of the screening of those who are qualified enough to participate in the rest of the selection process/stages.

b. Application blank. Thoughtfully designed with attributes required on the job in mind relevant biographical data are also obtained through the blank. It’s useful in subsequence interviews.

c. Second interview. It is often done to clarify issues arising in the application blank.

d. Psychological testing. Psychological tests are designed on different human attributes and the choice of test(s) depends on attributes that are necessary for the job in question. They give greater insight than results are generally more valid and reliable than most measures.

e. Work history. This has to do with examining the relevance of earlier job experiences of applicants. This is important in a job in which experience is needed and advertised.

f. Reference check. Opinions of former employer(s) and or people of eminent status are obtained. This, though not so reliable a measure, because no one will name a referee that will give negative comments, may provide useful insight in helping to reach decision to employ or not. In our current world of free-flow of information enabled by ITC, what you say online can come back to haunt you. 

Organisations now use Google, MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook, and WhatsApp to check out applicants and current employees. Information such as age, marital status, fraternity pranks, stuff you wrote, political affiliations and so forth. The legal, social and ethical implications, the positive and negative consequences and the guidelines for using such information for making employment decisions should be the focus of HR research in Nigeria.

g. Medical examination. This is done to examine the physiological state and fitness of candidates. To check for absence or otherwise illnesses that may impact efficiency on the job if employed. It should normally be carried out before employment is given to the prospective applicant. This is to forestall accusations by employees of being discriminated against on the basis of physical infirmity.

h. Recommendation. At this point, few of the applicants drawn during recruitment are left relative to available positions. This is because at every stage of the selection process some applicants are rejected as indicated by reducing the size of the bars in the figure above. Those recommended are those that meet most of the criteria for the job positions. They may be in two categories, those that will be given the offer and some kept for precautionary purposes. That is, in case those actually given the offer may not honour it, this group may easily be used as a replacement

i. Offer. At this point a decision to employ is communicated to the successful candidate. Also, both parties sign the contract. Also, both parties sign the contract of employment usually drawn by the employer and other formalities are concluded for the candidate to resume work.

PLACEMENT

Successful recruitment and selection culminates in placement on workers on the job they are best fit to do and not necessarily the jobs they had applied for. Efforts during placement are devoted to making the new employee suitably absorbed into not just a job position, but both career and lifetime opportunities for use of knowledge, skills, and importantly aptitudes that are latent and may be discovered along the line. Workers must be placed in the job on which they can best perform. This can be achieved;

a. by giving interest inventories to determine the area of interest

b. by placing the new recruit on all possible job positions, and using his relative performance rating to place him in his area of highest rating.

CONCLUSION

Staffing involves sequence of activities of which recruitment, selection and placement are major outposts. The overall goal is to create and implement entry portals for organisation using veritable and scientific modes to comb the labour market for the best possible candidates for the job.

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