Strategic staffing is a solution to the challenges of tax accounting during the tax season whereby instead of exposing your full-time staff to the hiring then firing of employees due to the changes in the business cycle, an efficient and cost-effective mixture of fulltime and temporary employees are utilized during busier times of the business year. Creating a strategic staffing solution does require some intelligent planning as well as a good follow-through. There are three steps that should be followed in order to successfully integrate temporary staffing into your workplace:
Step 1: Analyze your accounting team's workload. Figure out the total work capacity of your staff. To do this, simply multiply the number of staff members by the number of hours per day they work by the number of days a month they work. Factor in vacation and personal time. The end figure is the total work capacity for your staff.
Next, break down each step of each process it takes to complete a task. Be sure to identify which employee is responsible for each task as well as how and when the task is to be completed. This process of breaking down each task will help in later identifying which tasks will be appropriate to assign to temporary workers.
Step 2: Use your workload assessment from Step 1 to determine how much additional temporary staff you will need to hire. Your workload assessment will also be of help to you now when it comes to reviewing what new tax accounting functions may be transferred to a temporary staff member as well as how much time it should approximately take to complete a task.
Step 3: Monitor the progress of your temporary staff members as well as that of your strategic staffing plan. Ask your permanent staff how they feel about the implementation of the plan. Find out if they feel less stressed and rushed and more available to spend on priority projects than they did before the temporary staff was hired. If your strategic staffing plan is effective and successful, you will find that your permanent employees' productivity and morale should increase significantly.
