Staff is a collective word for an enterprise’s workforce. It can confer with all employees, or a particular group. The time period has a different human beings-associated that means withinside the military. As a verb, it way to deliver a workforce, consisting of to staff a department. Other meanings include an extended stick that aids strolling and a form of measuring rod.
Dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster give several definitions of the term. These include:
The staff of a business or organization.
A group of officials who assist a military commander with making plans and organisation and who do now no longer participate in lively combat.
A stout, handheld stick that helps strolling.
A form of measuring rod marked with graduation lines.
Horizontal lines that deliver that means to the notes on sheet music, additionally referred to as a stave.
A ceremonial rod that denotes a image of workplace or authority.
People at work
This article offers normally with the definition that refers to human beings working. The following examples illustrate a few common uses:
- We employ 12 full-time and 23 part-time staff in our Manchester workplace.
- The staff on the inn have been very helpful.
- How many contributors of the teaching staff have been withinside the meeting?
- The non-medical staff, consisting of porters and cleaners, can even obtain a pay rise.
The term also operates as a verb, for example:
- They staffed the support middle with certified counselors.
- The charity is seeking out volunteers to staff the food bank.
- The inspector suggested that the prison was seriously understaffed.
Origin of the term
Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries recommend that, withinside the experience of a rod or stick, the term is of Germanic beginning and pertains to the German Stab and the Dutch staf.
The workforce-associated definition many have come through the military. A commander contains a staff or baton as a image of workplace, and is assisted with the aid of using a set of officials. Use of the time period on this experience arose in the early 1700s.
The concept of staff officers and staff sergeants, who help the commander, then followed. First use of the time period to indicate a set of personnel probably took place withinside the 1830s.
Examples – when paired with any other phrase
The following paragraphs deliver common examples of the time period whilst it pairs with any other phrase:
Staff development: All the practices, procedures, resources, and guidelines that employers use to train employees to assist them work more effectively. Some might differentiate this from expert development, which focuses greater on careers than jobs.
Staff room: A common room wherein employees, especially teachers , can loosen up whilst they’re on a spoil or among classes.
Staff rota, roster: A plan that suggests which contributors of a set are doing which tasks. It additionally suggests whilst and wherein the people are working. These plans may be pretty fiddly and time-consuming to prepare. There are many software applications which can do that for you.
Staff eating place: This is a eating place for the employees of a company or organization. Some employers subsidize the value of food in order that personnel pay much less than they might for comparable fare in a normal eating place.