Introduction
An organization is aimed at the achievement of common goals through the alignment, deployment and management of the available resources and competencies . The objective of the organization itself can be varied and different – while some focus on the achievement of targeted profits, others are aimed at the provision of essential services such as transport, communication and infrastructure to the general public . Another group of organizations which are common are known as non-profit organizations. The aim of these non-profit organizations is the achievement of a common welfare goal or objective, whereby surplus revenues are directed at enriching the organizational objectives instead of distribution of the same as profits among the top management of the organization .
Irrespective of the nature of the organization, the most important aspect that needs to be highlighted is that it is based on the co-ordination and decision making among human resources at different levels for the utilization and management of resources in accordance to pre-planned goals to be achieved. It also needs to be highlighted that the human capital in the organization is capable and responsible for the attainment of results, which make it highly crucial for an organization to not only effectively plan out the organizational structure and staffing, but also ensure that the most suitable of human resources are obtained from the market for different positions .
The importance of staffing and organization
Staffing is a very important aspect as far as organizations are concerned. It has already been discussed that an organization is essentially amalgamation of different resources to be utilized and managed by human resources at different organizational levels. What it essentially means is that once the organizational goals and objectives have been established, it becomes important to divide the objective into key organizational duties to be performed, and at the same time ensure the derivation of results from each of such divisions . It is due to the fact that collective performance of each such division will lead to the integrated achievement of organizational goals at a divisional level .
It is this very perspective of staffing which make it highly important to plan out the organizational structure at the very beginning to identify divisions responsible for the performance of specific tasks. Simultaneously, the leadership of the organization has to identify the job-specific qualities and attributes of the personnel who would be appointed to key positions within the organization at each of these divisions or organizational levels. Generally, the size and nature of an organization usually influences the roles and responsibilities of the personnel at each such divisional level. The greater the complexity of operations, the higher would be the qualification and sill requirement of personnel at divisional levels . Likewise, for smaller organizations with lesser complexities in operations, would be lesser, and so will be the requisite skills and qualifications of the personnel to shoulder responsibilities. It needs to be noted that in case the skills and competencies of the human resources do not match the requirements of the department or organizational division, achievement of the expected results become a challenge, which will affect the overall mechanism of the organization . These perspectives make it important to now focus on the nature and background of the organization in order to correctly ascertain the specific needs and its requirements, as these will vary with the nature of operations of the organization .
Organizational Background – One River Child
One River Child is an upcoming Non-Profit organization aimed at enriching the lives of children of the African-American community in and around Brookfield Village, in Oakland in California. It has been observed that almost one-thirds of the community in Brookfield Village is unable to complete high school education for their children due to the lack of adequate resources and a number of other demographic factors. The organization has been planned to be engaged in provision of workforce to different labor intensive industries in and around California such as factories, restaurants, amusement parks, shopping centers and other such places. It has been observed that the demand for low or semi-skilled workforce is very high in the region due to the progressive development in urban areas where there are large numbers of openings for entry level positions or hourly-wage earners. Also, there is a disparity in the distribution of labor as skilled and qualified individuals are quickly absorbed in different specialized organizations, leading to a significantly high demand for entry level workers at small scale organizations involved in different trades. Another problem which has added on to this disparity is the shortage of low or semi-skilled workers needed for restaurant, shopping malls, factories, amusement parks and such. It is widely contributed to the low development of the community in Brookfield Village.
The organization One River Child aims at performing two specific tasks. One will be to be able to develop a minimum level of competency among the youth from poor families, so that they can be provided to the different organizations in demand of workers for a consultancy fee. The other aim is to utilize the surplus financial resources gathered from operations to the development and schooling of children of the community, especially in the case of high school education. The aim is to bring in as many children as possible who are forced to leave high school because of poverty. The goal of the organization is to be able to contribute to the development and enhancement of the lifestyle of the community as much as possible. Initially, the organization will be essentially an SME with the requirement of small number of, yet key organizational positions. The long term goals of the organization are to expand into neighboring states in the USA, which have a high ethnic population characterized by comparatively low development.
The operations of the organization are planned on development of a network through public relations, whereby the department responsible will be in charge of reaching out to both organizations and communities. One of the tasks to be performed will be to convince the communities of the need of education and vocational training for the youth, so as to gain as many participants for the development. At the same time, the department is also expected to reach out to the market and provide client organizations with their required manpower needs – if possible, from the enrollments of the young African-American participants on One River Child – if not, then outsourcing. The fees collected will be utilized for two purposes – one to provide for the operational expenses and salaries and two, the surplus being utilized for further developmental work aimed at the community.
Keeping in accordance to the objective of provision of development to the young population of the community, it is essential that there is a team looking into the training and development exercises to be provided to the community. It has been planned that the organization will utilize a rented premise for operations, whereby the training and development team will be responsible for generation of a pool of low skilled or semi-skilled human resources from the community itself. The training and development team will also be expected to conduct outdoor exercises and ensure participation of young people. They will be expected to have an industry based outlook on the training and development exercises , hence it will be essential to ensure that the team responsible for training and development are also familiar with learning exercises based on periodic industry visits .
Last but not the least, the organization being Non-Profit in nature, needs to ensure that the best utilization is done, as far as financial resources are concerned. In case of this particular organization, there are two financial aspects concerned – generation of financial resources from client organizations and management of funds for training and development exercises, in addition to the regular operations and salaries needed to run the organization.
It is expected that collectively, these four core departments of the organization will help in the achievement of the organization’s goals. Therefore, the staffing of the organization in general and the departments in particular have been planned as mentioned in the next section.
Staffing and Organization Plan
Public relations – given the fact that the size of the organization is small and the operations are focused initially on a limited area, the public relations department has been planned to consist of three staff. Among them, one will be ‘Head of Public Relations’ and two will be ‘Public Relations Officer’. The Head of Public Relations will be responsible for overseeing the attainment of client orders as well as collaborations with the targeted community.
Training and development team will be consisting of three members – one ‘Learning and Development Chief’ and two ‘Learning and Development Associate’. The department will be work in close co-ordination with the Public Relations department to be able to identify the training and development needs of both the community members as well as individual team members or associates, in order to bridge the gap between requirement and supply of low and semi-skilled workers in the area.
The determined qualifications and roles of the different positions have been mentioned as under.
Qualifications and roles of each position
The following table outlines the roles and responsibility of each of the positions of the organization.
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