Using data to strategically deploy staffing resources

Journal article

Purpose: Our environmentally controlled library warehouse stores 10 million collection items and its team of staff provides a delivery service to our students and researchers. Statistics were showing that the demand for the service was much higher than forecast at the design stage and, as a result, the operationally intensive environment had bottlenecks and backlogs which were affecting the service level agreements. It was clear that the staffing levels were inadequate to meet demand so we needed to capture data to enable evidence-based decision making to restructure and supplement staffing.

Design, methodology or approach: Each of the activities undertaken by staff was observed and timed over extended periods which resulted in detailed measurements for each elemental task. Based on known demand for services we were able to extrapolate these measurements to model the demand on services and, therefore, the staffing requirement for a whole year.

Findings: We were able to provide evidence to show that the levels of staffing were inadequate and two further full-time equivalent (FTE) staff were required. The data also highlighted specific areas that required higher and lower levels of resourcing than were currently provided. 

Authors: Williams, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Emerald
• Journal: Library Management
• Volume: 39
• Issue: 3/4
• Pages: 166-171
• Publication date: 2018-01-17
• Acceptance date: 2017-11-21
• DOI: 10.1108/LM-09-2017-0098
• ISSN: 0143-5124