How to Create a Staffing Plan

A staffing plan unites some of the most important aspects of a successful news business: strategy, goals, finances and people. It’s an opportunity to assess where you are, where you want to go, and what it takes to reach your goals. 

Why a staffing plan is important

A staffing plan allows you to step back and assess your current and future needs when it comes to your organization’s most important resource: its people. It ensures your hiring is in line with your strategies and goals and helps you feel confident that any new hiring investments will move the needle toward sustainability. Here are some other benefits:

• It prompts you to go beyond your gut or what you’re most familiar with to understand what staffing choices will move your news business forward in the long-term. 
• It gives you the confidence to know exactly how a new hire will benefit your organization — and justifies the cost.
• It streamlines your hiring process. Once you’re ready to hire, you know exactly what you need and why, which frees you up to focus on making it happen and recruiting the right person.

• It can help with employee growth and retention, since you can identify training and professional development needs that will benefit both parties. 
• Bringing on a new team member typically allows a busy founder to give up some portion of their duties, which can be hard. But founders often tell us they were able to grow their businesses only after they gave up some control and shared the responsibility of building their organization.
• It can be a key component to succession planning, allowing you to get the right people in the door early enough to start planning a key employee’s eventual exit.

How to get started

Make sure you have a solid understanding of your finances and can project your revenue and expenses. This will tell you when and under what circumstances you can hire, and how it would affect your bottom line in the near and longer term. 

Next, prepare yourself to think realistically and strategically about where you are and where you want to go. It’s critical to have a clear sense of how your new hires would fit into the bigger picture.

Finally, don’t do this alone! This is a major strategic conversation, so it makes sense to involve your current team members, board members, advisory board or other key stakeholders that are invested in your organization. If you are a solo founder, this might be a spouse, mentor, parent or other trusted sounding board. 

Understand the options

As you start thinking about what your news business needs, it’s useful to articulate on the front end what’s on the table.

Employee Type

Most news businesses work with a mix of employee types, depending on their needs and resources. But the definitions of employee types and the obligations employers have to them varies considerably depending on the size of your news business and where you’re located. Here is an overview that breaks down some of that complexity.

That said, here are some common types of workers we’ve seen across LION membership, alongside some things to keep in mind.

• Full-time employees (FTEs) are, by the IRS’ definition, team members who work an average of at least 30 hours per week or 130 hours per month. But the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes regulations like minimum wage and overtime pay, leaves it up to the employer to decide. It’s important to familiarize yourself with your state’s labor regulations; some states are more stringent than others on the definition of part-time vs. full-time. 
• Part-time employees (PTEs) work fewer than 30 hours a week or 130 hours a month. Keep in mind that anyone working part-time will obviously work fewer hours, but will also need more time to get settled in the role, build relationships, make progress and create systems, structures and workflows for their duties. So if you hire a part-time ad salesperson for 20 hours a week, you might expect that it would take them twice as long to start closing deals than it would a full-time worker.
• Contingent workers are hired to complete a particular task or project and — no surprise — the definition and regulations vary state by state. For a news business, this category of worker typically captures freelancers, independent contractors, or consultants that can be hired for single or recurring projects. Here’s a breakdown of types of contingent workers. It’s important that the statement of work is spelled out at the start of the relationship with a contingent worker. It should include things like a detailed description of the services they will render, deadlines or milestones to meet, the agreed-upon payment and how they’ll get paid along with signatures from all parties. 
• Volunteers are people who contribute to your organization who are unpaid. This can include pro bono workers, event volunteers or board members. But, of course, anyone who consistently and meaningfully contributes to your organization (like founders and interns) should be paid for their critical work.

One important note: Managing people takes time and intention to do well, so factor this into your planning as you consider your mix of worker types. Perhaps it’s cheaper to work with a group of freelancers instead of hiring a full-time reporter, but managing them and their work costs the news leader time they might otherwise spend on revenue generating activities. It might be possible to eventually make up that cost by moving away from freelancers. So, whenever possible, think long-term. People are the ultimate investment, so treat them as such. 

Job Types

Many news leaders are familiar with the different types of editorial jobs, like reporter, editor, copy editor, etc. But many are less familiar with the business, financial, operational and administrative roles that are necessary for a built-out business. And because the legacy news organizations from which many news leaders originate don’t tend to signify experience level by job title (you’re a “reporter” whether you’ve been there 2 or 20 years), news leaders may also be unfamiliar with the different levels of seniority that come with different job titles.  

Here is a handy collection of job descriptions focused on revenue and operations developed by the American Journalism Project and its grantees that can give you ideas as you consider different roles and think about the skills and qualifications required for each. 

Peer organization teams

We all like to know what others are doing, so it may be useful to understand how other independent news businesses are organized and what roles they have on staff. Here are a few independent news business’ staff pages alongside their mission statement. 

LION Member	Mission Statement	Staff Page
Beacon Media	To spur reforms in the public interest by shining light on wrongdoings and abuse by government, businesses and other powerful institutions through in-depth, solutions-driven journalism.	Link to Staff Page
Fort Worth Report	We pledge to produce high-quality objective local journalism that informs public decision-making, addresses the quality of life of our community’s citizens, holds our policymakers accountable and tells our readers’ stories by listening to them and making sure they are valued and understood. In all that we do, earning the trust and respect of our audience is paramount. Our reporting will be free to all who access our primary digital channels.	Link to Staff Page
Mississippi Free Press	The mission of the Mississippi Free Press, a new nonprofit journalism website and multimedia network that launched in March 2020, is to publish deep public-interest reporting into causes of and solutions to the social, political and structural challenges facing all Mississippians and their communities. Mississippians need to know each other across regions and share our challenges and solutions despite geographic and other differences. We are introducing Mississippians to each other through our deep accountability reporting and compelling people-focused storytelling, and by convening online and physical “solutions circles,” using our statewide networks to ensure inclusivity and representation.	Link to Staff Page
Outlier Media	Outlier Media is a Detroit-based service journalism organization. We identify, report, and deliver valuable information to empower residents to hold landlords, municipal government, and elected officials accountable for long standing problems. By keeping residents first, we hope to give more than we take and leave people with the information they need to create change in their own communities.	Link to Staff Page

Ground yourself in your mission

Planning for the future can be stressful, and it’s easy to get off track or lost in the weeds. That’s why it can be useful to start by grounding yourself in your mission. This can serve as a North Star as you navigate your way forward. If you don’t already have a mission statement, here’s a resource for how to articulate one and why.  

Identify your Stage of Sustainability

LION is in the process of mapping the stages of sustainability based on what we’ve seen across the independent news industry. It may be useful to articulate your current stage and consider what it would take to progress to the next one. The stages are:

• Ideation: You are developing a concept for a news business.
• Preparation: You are beginning to implement a minimum viable product (MVP) for a news business.
• Building: You are expanding your editorial offerings based on audience and market research while building a foundation for revenue and operations.
• Maintaining: You have had some journalistic impact and are developing your target audience, but are still seeking operational and financial stability.
• Poised for Growth: You have a clear target audience and your revenue and operations are stable. You have the internal capacity to do the work you’ve committed to in service of your organizational goals and mission.
• Growing: You are enhancing your editorial offerings to reach new audiences. Revenue is growing and you are building your team.
• Scaling: You have a stable audience and revenue base and are pursuing significant new revenue streams or audiences.
• Sustaining: You have achieved revenue stability across multiple streams, are having consistent journalistic impact, and have sustainable workloads and compensation for staff and contributors.

Once you’ve identified your current position, ask yourself: how would one or more hires help you move to the next stage? 

Set Organizational Goals

It’s critical to understand your major organizational goals for the next year when creating a staffing plan. Otherwise you might be meeting a short-term need and missing the bigger picture. These should be specific, holistic goals that move your news business forward and contribute to its sustainability rather than goals focused on just one aspect of what you do. For example, it might sound wonderful to hire a new reporter, but perhaps an ad salesperson or audience manager might help you achieve more far-reaching aims. Learn how to set high-level organizational goals here and to set specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) goals here. 

As you consider your goals, map out exactly what it would take and what it looks like. What has to happen for you to reach this goal? How will you measure progress and success? 

Now give yourself a cold, hard reality check. Are your goals reasonable given what it would take to achieve them? Should you pare back your expectations or pursue other goals that may be equally strategic but more in reach? And even if your goals seem within reach, are they truly contributing to your business’ sustainability or might you reconsider how they connect to the bottom line? 

Think through Key Roles

No two news businesses are organized exactly alike. But because they are businesses, there are a number of key roles that they require to thrive, and it may be useful to ask yourself who on your team is  — or should be — filling them. This may help guide your thoughts as you identify needs or redundancies and refine organizational goals. 

Ask yourself:

• Who is owning the vision and strategic direction?
• Who is ensuring your business is in compliance and protected against any legal or financial risk? 
• Who is working on the activities that generate revenue?
• Who is managing your money?
• Who is producing your product?
• Who is quality controlling your product?
• Who is ensuring your product reaches your audience?
• Who is overseeing team culture and overall team well being?
• Who is overseeing the team’s professional development and performance goals?
• Who’s owning DEIB/EDI?
• Who’s owning onboarding and recruiting?

Evaluate your Current Team

Once you’ve got a destination, it’s time to locate your starting point. Evaluate your current team to identify their primary roles and responsibilities along with how their work contributes to your organizational goals. Don’t forget to include those who are offering key external support, like an accountant or an attorney. Identify the differences between what people are supposed to do versus what they actually do versus what they can potentially do — and maybe what they shouldn’t be doing given their bandwidth and capacity. And make sure you are actually talking to your team about their work. Your assumptions about what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis may not be correct. Adding a new hire will absolutely affect your existing employees’ work and that should be taken into consideration while planning.

If you want to take this to the next level, fill out job scorecards for each team member to get a full picture of what people do and how they advance the mission. 

Map out the following for each employee/worker:

1. Who are your team members? Include anyone who regularly and meaningfully contributes to your news business.
2. What are their key responsibilities? Don’t include every little thing. Instead, consider their high-level buckets of work, like “financial planning,” “freelancer management” and “newsletter production.”
3. How do they divide their time? Assign (or better yet, ask them to estimate) what percentage of their time is focused on editorial, revenue generation, administration, etc.
4. How do they contribute to organizational goals? Which organizational goals are they currently working toward? How does their work move the organization forward?
5. What is their current bandwidth and capacity? Are they working beyond what they can reasonably do and are perhaps burnt out? Or might they be looking for more challenges and opportunities?
6. What other areas of expertise does this person have that they aren’t necessarily applying to their current role but may be relevant to your news business?
7. What are their expectations in terms of growth and professional development?
8. What insights have surfaced as you think about this person’s current and future roles and responsibilities and how they fit into the organizational goals?

Conduct an HR Gap Analysis

Now that you have a good idea of your current team and your organization goals, it’s time to evaluate the gaps between what you can do and what you want to do. Go through the following steps to determine what skills gaps you will need to fill.

1. Look over each of your organizational goals and determine what skills you need on the team in order to meet them. These could be skills like “donor cultivation,” “coding,” “grant writing” or “story development.”
2. For each skill, evaluate how critical it is to accomplishing the goal and what level of skill is required, then rate them on a 1-3 scale. For example, you might rate “knowledge of local philanthropy” at a 2 because it’s not as important as, say, “donor cultivation,” but you may rate the skill level at a 1 because it’s very important that they already understand the particulars of your philanthropic scene. That reflects the reality that a new development hire with extensive previous experience and a good set of contacts and influence is likely to bring in major donors more quickly. That will prepare you for the fact that your potential hire will probably cost you more than an entry level employee but will likely pay off in the long-term. In hiring, as in life, you tend to get what you pay for. 
3. Note whether you already have the skill on your team, whether you could train someone on the team to learn it, or whether you would need to add that skillset to your organization.

Identify external considerations

It’s critical to think through all the internal factors involved in your staffing plan, but it’s also important to address the external influences that may play a role by answering the following questions.

1. What is the talent availability in my market?
2. What are the compensation expectations for the roles I’m seeking to hire?
3. What changes in technology might affect the labor supply and demand?
4. What hiring trends should I consider?
5. What are my aspirational peers, allies and competitors doing?
6. What economic or financial factors might influence my plan?
7. What DEIB factors should I consider given my goals and the market?

Map out your staffing needs

You know what skills you need to meet your organizational goals. Now it’s time to start shaping that information into the positions you’ll need by going through the following steps:

1. Identify the biggest gaps between your current capacity and your goals. These are your greatest area of need and would likely be the skills required of your next few hires.
2. Consider how you might shift the responsibilities or areas of focus of your current team members to better align with your goals or to more efficiently or effectively meet them. Can you better leverage some of your team members’ skills? Would training or professional development enable you to accomplish some of your goals without a new hire? 
3. Identify the role tools or technology could play in addressing some of your needs. Could you automate some of your workflows to free up critical staff time? Would a new CMS or CRM enable you to forgo an administrative hire?
4. Think through what you can accomplish through contractors or part-time hires versus a full-time hire. Contractors may be a good fit for one-off needs or short-term projects. Part-time employees may work well for needs that are ongoing, but not intensive. Full-time employees are best for ongoing, intensive needs that are integral to the organization. Consider if or when you might shift workers from one category to another to meet your needs.
5. Identify the experience and skill-level you require. Does the role require someone who is able to strategize and design, or someone who will plug into current systems and execute? Don’t expect one person to do it all. Be realistic about what you need and design the roles accordingly.
6. Articulate when you need to make these hires to meet your goals, with the understanding that it takes around three months for an employee to settle into a new role and six months to a year before they are executing at a high level. Adjust your expectations accordingly. Setting unrealistic expectations of a new hire could lead to burnout, dissatisfaction or their exit, and turnover is expensive, time-consuming and frustrating because it sets you back from meeting your goals.

Create job scorecards for your newly articulated roles

If you didn’t create job scorecards before, now’s the time. It may feel like busywork, but it will pay off in the long run. A job scorecard details the outcomes, competencies and skills that a new hire needs to demonstrate to be successful in the role, and connects them to your organizational goals. Creating one helps you articulate why you need this new role, and later creates a venue to ensure you and the employee are on the same page regarding expectations while giving the employee a clear path for professional growth.

Let’s say you want to hire a major donors manager. You might include the following outcome in the job scorecard: bring in 20 major donors at the $150,000 level in the next year to be successful in the role. And the competencies/skills to help them get there might include being a strong relationship builder and understanding how to quickly and effectively prioritize different opportunities. 

The job scorecard is the backbone of your hiring process; everything you spell out in the scorecard should be incorporated into your job description, interviews and eventually, when you hire a candidate, their performance reviews. This provides clarity for you as you think through what the role entails and what success looks like, and it is invaluable for your employee, who will know exactly what to expect and how they’ll be evaluated.

More information on how to create them and how to use them here. 

An important note: Resist the urge to try to have your cake and eat it too by squishing together two roles into one. That amounts to asking one person to do two different jobs and demonstrate two different skill sets, and unicorns are rare for a reason. This can very easily lead to ineffective work and, ultimately, burnout. You either need to make the tough choice about which responsibilities to prioritize (i.e. what will give you the bigger return on investment at this particular moment), consider hiring for two roles, or move some of the work to a contractor or part-time worker.

Examine your workplace culture

After having done all this work to assess your current staff and plan for your future one, it’s critical to take a good, hard look at your work environment to ensure that you have the systems and structures in place to set people up for success.  

Healthy workplaces don’t just happen; they must be built with intention and conscientiously maintained. In our experience, one of the biggest contributors to burnout is a workplace environment that is toxic, unsupportive, chaotic, opaque or poorly structured. A few things to consider:

• Conduct an employee survey to understand how people feel about the current environment. Your view of the culture and its strengths and weaknesses may not be the same as others’. In very small organizations, this could be accomplished through honest 1:1s and group conversations as long as everyone feels comfortable and safe enough to speak candidly. 
• Evaluate where your organization is on its DEIB journey and incorporate best practices into all aspects of the work. You can find some great resources here. 
• Think through how information is created and communicated across your organization. Is the information clear, accessible, transparent and actionable?
• Articulate the management styles of you and other leaders and whether they meet team needs. There may be a need for some training or realignment.
• Make sure there is clarity, alignment and documentation around mission, vision, core values, processes and policies to ensure everyone knows what is expected. Here’s a guide for how and why to craft your mission, vision and values.  

Here are some ways to get started: Onboarding and Preparing a New Hire for Success.