I personally agree that staffing is perhaps the most important function of a company. However, I do understand why several people do not view it this way. All organizations have a limited budget, meaning they have to prioritize which functions get more money allocated towards them than others. As mentioned in the lecture, hiring new employees costs a substantial amount of money. This takes away from the budget that can be allocated towards other important business functions such as marketing or product design. An argument for doing this could be that if the organization does not have a strong product/service or a strong ability to reach consumers, it does not matter who the company employees are, as their efforts would be pointless if no consumers want to purchase the product (or are even aware that the product and its benefits exist). This perspective focuses on the idea that the product itself is more important than those who work to make the product successful. If a product is not good, even the most perfect employees may not be able to make it successful.
I believe there are more weaknesses than strengths to not prioritizing recruitment and selection. One potential strength in an organization’s decision to not prioritize recruitment and selection is that it opens up a large amount of the budget that can be put towards other important business functions. However, as the lecture mentioned, strengthening other areas of the organization may be pointless if the right personnel are not there to maintain it. Another weakness is that due to the fact that a good workforce can be a strong competitive advantage, competitors who do focus on staffing may gain the competitive advantage and thus become more successful in the long run. By prioritizing staffing, an organization has a better chance of receiving the best applicants and snagging them before their competitors can. If they do not do this, they may not have the best pool of applicants to pull from when they do decide they need to hire new people.
Hi Anna,
Great post! I agree that smaller companies just do not have the budget to allocate to staffing, particularly subscribing to job sites, attending job fairs, hiring recruiters, and administering the process. By building a budget little by little, organizations can create a competitive advantage as you mentioned to become relevant in their industry.
Alina
Hi Anna,
You made some strong points regarding the reasons why recruitment may not be the most important priority for some companies. I liked what you said about how if a company has a bad product and no consumers to buy it, that proper staffing can only do so much. While I agree with this to a certain extent, you could also argue that proper staffing is exactly what a company like that would need to get back on their feet. Proper staffing could directly result to better product design, marketing and consumer reach, and management. As you mentioned in the last paragraph, allocating resources to areas such as product design and marketing may be pointless if staffing is not done well. For these reasons, I agree with you in that recruitment is the most fundamental and vital aspect to conducting business and should be made a priority for nearly every business.