Question

Asha is living in a small village in Rajasthan. Her mother has good culinary skills. Inspired by her mother she joined a course in 'Food and Beverages Production' in Jaipur. After completing her course she asked her mother to open a sweets shop in Jaipur, to which her mother agreed. The business was doing well and had started growing. To expand her business she felt the need for additional personnel. Instead of selecting personnel from any other source she thought of helping her relatives and appointed five of them. But after doing all their efforts she found that none of her relatives were providing satisfactory service leading to lower productivity. Also, the quality of the products started deteriorating. This made Asha realize that the ability of an organisation to achieve its goals depends upon the quality of its human resources. This was ignored by her at the time of selecting the personnel for her expansion of the program.

1. Identify and state the function of management which could have helped Asha at the time of fulfilling her need for additional personnel in the organisation.
2. State any three benefits of the function identified in (a) above.

Answer 1

1. Management function of staffing. In staffing, "people are put to work." It starts with workforce planning and includes a variety of other tasks like hiring, selecting, training, developing, promoting, paying, and evaluating the performance of the workforce. In other words, staffing refers to the part of management that deals with finding, using, and keeping a happy and productive workforce. The managerial task of filling and maintaining occupied positions in the organisational structure has been referred to as staffing. This is accomplished by first determining the workforce's needs, then hiring, selecting, placing, promoting, appraising, and developing personnel to fill the roles specified in the organisational structure.
2. Proper staffing ensures the following benefits to the organisation:
   (i) Aids in the identification and hiring of qualified candidates for various positions;
   (ii) Increases performance by putting the right person in the right job;
   (iii) Ensures the enterprise's long-term survival and growth through succession planning for managers.
   (iv) Aids in the efficient use of human resources. Overmanning is avoided to avoid underutilization of personnel and high labour costs. At the same time, it avoids work disruption by indicating personnel shortages in advance; and
   (v) Improves employee job satisfaction and morale through objective evaluation and fair compensation for their contributions.