Use These Six Sections for a Staffing Management Plan

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The Staffing Management Plan describes your overall approach for acquiring and managing human resources on your project. The types of information to include in this plan include:

• Overall staffing approach. Describe the overall approach you will take for staffing the project, including your use of employees, contractors and outsourcing firms. For instance, if some of the work is outsourced, state that here. Describe the rational for using contract labor versus employee labor. If the timing of bringing in resources is critical, you can discuss that as well.  
• Location. Describe where the team is located. For example, the team members may be co-locating for the length of this project. Some team members may be working from home. You may also have virtual team members that reside in other cites or other countries.
• Staff acquisition. This is probably a table that describes what types of resources are needed, when they are needed and where they are coming from. If you are projecting to use contract resources or new employees you may need to describe when you will start to recruit for the positions.
• Training. In many cases, you may have the correct number of team members to support your project. However, they may not have the right skills. If you know of specific people who will need training, state so in this section. This section does not include general skills to increase competencies. Only include the training that is specifically required for your team to be successful on this project.
• Reassignment. All projects come to an end. Describe the plan for reassigning the project team once their role on the project is completed.
• Project rewards and consequences. Describe if there will be specific incentives for the staff on your project. This could be simply non-monetary rewards such as formal “Thanks” awards at weekly status meetings. There could also be monetary bonuses based on the successful completion of the project. By default, negative behavior is not rewarded with these incentives.

Most projects do not need a Staffing Management Plan. However, if your project uses a lot of human resources, this Plan may be helpful for you to think about how you will acquire, develop and motivate the staff on your project. If it is helpful to you, create one.