Optimal Core Staffing Model: Staffing up rapidly and reliably

PEAK is dedicated to helping you become more effective by reducing your overall costs through implementation of the Optimal Core Staffing Model. This model is tailored to suit the uncertainty of both project cycles and economic cycles.

How do I staff up quickly without increasing overhead?

Our approach is to spend the quality time with you up-front to fully understand your needs, while continuously recruiting in the market and identifying quality technical talent. The combination provides you with a high quality, high velocity delivery system of talent for your organization. This allows us to provide you with quality people when you need them, so that you don’t need to retain a surplus of employees.

Reliable staffing prevents future layoffs

Like many companies, you may have recently experienced the worst economic downturn in your company's history, and you may not be out of it yet. Now is the time to plan your company's future. Do you really want to staff up with direct employees incurring the burdened expenses and worrying about how you’ll maintain them when business gets soft again? The affect of layoffs on your core staff can be devastating. Let PEAK help you create a strategy that helps keep your costs low and flexible and allows you to maintain your core staff indefinitely.

Fixed-cost reduction plan via the Optimal Core Staffing Model

As shown below, many companies maintain a high level of core staff to anticipate peaks in project cycles.

Non-optimal core staffing model graph

With rapid, reliable, quality staffing (typically within 48-72 hours), companies can reduce their core staff as shown below.

Optimal core staffing model graph

Use contractors to keep your costs flexible so that when budgets are cut and projects are put on hold, you can remain profitable. During good times, the tendency is to staff up with contractors and then to convert them to direct employees. When the market dips, you either must carry them at great expense, or lay them off – dampening overall morale.


In order to create a viable long-term plan, the savvy HR professional or Engineering Department Manager employs an Optimal Core Staffing Model. As shown below, your core staff is the center and your non-core staff surrounds the core.

Core Staffing Model

Your non-core staff can include hard-to-find technical talent needed for special projects and staff augmentation to meet project demands. PEAK’s payrolling solution [LINK TO PAYROLLING] allows you to augment your staffing needs. As your company staffs up for projects, payrolling can reduce costs. You can payroll retired staff when projects require knowledge and experience only alumni can provide. When you need to staff up quickly, payrolling, before hiring, full-time workers, allows you to avoid the burden of overhead cost until you’re ready to add them to your core staff.


This is more necessary today than ever. It used to be that profit-savvy managers used this for 50 percent or more of their workforce to survive the boom and bust cycle of the economy. Today, however, we not only have to survive the boom and bust cycle of the economy, we have to staff with the right technical expertise and the right project experience. If you keep hiring and training to cover all types of possible projects, it will bankrupt you.


So what is the answer? Direct hire only your core staff Engineering Managers, Project Managers, Discipline Experts and other essential staff, and contract the rest of your technical staff on a project-by-project basis.

Benefits of the Optimal Core Staffing Model

  1. Your core staff has a higher degree of job security. Remember, for 75 percent of the U.S. workforce, job security is the #1 need. Done correctly, you could have a no-layoff policy.
  2. You ensure long-term profitability for your business enterprise.
  3. You attract the best talent in the contracting marketplace by paying the contractors an above-market premium. You can afford to do this because they are fully billable when on board. No holiday or vacation pay, no training costs, no corporate seminar costs, no sick pay, no unemployment compensation premium, and no cash drain when your engineers are on the bench. Remember, 25 percent of the U.S. Workforce prefers premium pay over job security – do not make the assumption that your values are their values.

Adapt the Optimal Core Staffing Model in your business enterprise by partnering with a supplier who a) understands your needs and b) has quality contractors recruited, reference-checked and ready-to-go when you need to staff up.