A staff budget outlines the money a business plans to spend on employees and independent contractors. For certain types of businesses, like service companies, the staff budget is one of the largest expenses for the organization. Learn how to manage a staff budget to ensure that you're using company resources efficiently.

List each staff member and corresponding salary for the employee in a spreadsheet to get an idea of the total current staffing cost on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

Develop your staff budget in the same spreadsheet. After totaling up the expenses, establish a firm ceiling for expenditures on staff. Make adjustments to the budget expenses over time to ensure compliance with that staff spending maximum. As the business grows, you can increase the limit to hire more people as needed.

Evaluate need in the department regarding staff periodically. Ask current workers if they need assistance with their work and monitor the work process to decide if more staff is necessary.

Monitor the productivity of current staff to make further decisions regarding the budget, particularly staff cuts if required. You can keep tabs on the performance of workers using software and regular performance reviews (meetings to discuss each worker's progress). For instance, companies can keep track of the efficiency of data entry professionals with software that times and evaluated entries over a period of time.

Make additions or deletions to the current staff and corresponding budget based on your findings periodically. For instance, if you find that an employee isn’t meeting productivity goals nor helping the firm operate efficiently, you might decide to eliminate that position and update the staff budget accordingly.

Set a date to adjust the staff budget each year after taking into account all factors (such as productivity and revenues) from the previous year. As staffing managers Gennie Justus and Joyce Siegele of Northside Hospital in Atlanta explain, budgeting changes are based on trends, historical numbers of employees and internal changes.