Staffing for Results: A Guide to Working Smarter

Citation

Hodes, J. (2003), "Staffing for Results: A Guide to Working Smarter", New Library World, Vol. 104 No. 4/5, pp. 181-184. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074800310476025

This is one of the Public Library Association’s Results series dealing with staff output and performance. I may be showing my age here, but it brings back vague and uncomfortable memories of the time and motion studies I encountered in the 1970s. However, instead of stop‐watches and clip‐boards, we now have computers and workload process analysis.

The assumptions and rationale behind this publication are sound – namely, that public libraries are undergoing profound change in an era of restricted public funding, and that better use has to be made of scarce staff resources. Staff roles have diversified and become more complex, while the task of allocating and distributing work among them effectively and efficiently is increasingly difficult as non‐traditional library tasks proliferate. This publication assists, providing tools to ensure that task assignments and staffing levels are arrived at through the use of data and workforce and workload analysis, not “gut feelings”.

There are six chapters, the first one providing information on what you need to know before you begin the process of measuring work practices and loads in your library, identifying best practice, assigning costs to each activity, and analysing resource allocation. In this chapter the authors make the excellent point that you should only go down this path if you are actually going to use the results! The other chapters concern themselves with designing your specific project, how to do basic numeric and process analysis, how to go beyond the basics and how to act on what you learn, including communicating your results and dealing with change and resistance. There are a number of useful instructions, workforms and diagrams to assist you in your endeavours, as well as a good index.

This is a useful publication for anyone interested in improving efficiency and maximising staffing resources in a public sector library. However, depending on the industrial relations regime in place in your country, caution should be exercised as to how this type of initiative is implemented, and considerable time and effort will need to be devoted to change management and communication strategies.