staffing

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The practice of hiring and dismissing the people who work for an organization.

   Effective staffing requires balancing recruitment with the occasional difficult dismissal.

   She oversees staffing across three regional offices.

   Similarhiring, recruitment, personnel

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The personnel needed to carry out a particular project.

   Project managers calculated the staffing needed for the construction phase.

   Inadequate staffing forced the clinic to close on weekends.

   Similarpersonnel, manpower, workforce, labor

   Note

   Here the word answers how many people a job needs, not how they are hired, and that separates it from the hiring-and-dismissing sense. If personnel could stand in its place, this is the meaning. It reaches well beyond offices: Railway Magazine in 1956 uses it for the workers of a junction station whose staffing the Dursley Company paid for. The of-phrase there names the place being manned.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of staff.

   The agency is staffing several hospitals during flu season.

   Managers are staffing the night shift with experienced workers.

   Note

   The verb behind it always takes an object, and what is being staffed follows directly: staffing the night shift, staffing several hospitals. The same spelling also serves as a gerund, where it comes close to the noun for hiring and dismissing. The object tells them apart. The gerund keeps one (staffing hospitals is hard work), while the noun takes of instead (the staffing of hospitals).

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