Staffing

People (as in People, Process and Technology), while that could potentially remain, becomes Staffing in this model to support the utilization of the word as a verb. Dictionary.com defines staffing as “a group of persons, as employees, charged with carrying out the work of an establishment or executing some undertaking”. It is in the executing some undertaking that this author finds significance. Having people is different from staffing a service, process or function.

Initial Staffing Approaches

As discussed in the article on Indelible.global [1], many organizations begin by hiring a series of inexperienced staff. This can cause some concerns, in observations, and therefore one may gain advantage from staffing in cohorts.

Teaming up experienced staff with inexperienced staff at manageable levels and then adding over time may lead to better results. Your results may vary. For example, hiring two experience associates and teaming each with one inexperienced associate with sustainable responsibilities allows the inexperienced staff to gain experience while dedicating some time to Documentation.

As the inexperienced staff mature, adding on additional inexperienced staff becomes less difficult because there are support mechanisms for the new inexperienced staff. This may produce better results than assigning several inexperienced staffers to a single experienced resource responsible for numerous undocumented or immature processes.

How Much Staff is Required

This is a complex topic, with variables including what services are being delivered, the SOC Enterprise Model, how large the organizational footprint is and how many incidents are occurring. Good experiences occur when Reporting is in place to measure important aspects like Signal to Noise Ratio married with Use Case Implementation Velocity and Mean Time to Contain can help an organization gauge appropriate staffing levels orientated to actionable metrics and desired outcome.

Retention and Culture

Some studies have reported that the cost of turnover for a highly skilled work is 213% their annual salary (Christina Merhar, 2016). Edward Lawler III states "The more complex the job and the higher level of the job, the greater the cost."(Edward Lawler II, 2015) and makes the argument that some employee turnover is desirable.

It can be said that organizations which lack Documentation will experience higher costs as well if Enterprise Amnesia occurs as a result of the associate leaving.

Citations

Christina Merhar. 2016. "Employee Retention - The Real Cost of Losing an Employee". Retrieved from https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/bid/312123/employee-retention-the-real-cost-of-losing-an-employee.

Edwqard Lawler III. 2015. Rethink Employee Turnover. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardlawler/2015/07/21/rethinking-employee-turnover/#63de46017e69