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Staffing & Delegation Policy

Guide

Staffing & Delegation Policy

HR documentation · policy owned by the Human Resources unit (see ORG.md). Governs when a Unit Lead does the work versus hires additional staff.

Principle: Unit Leads assume the work

Each Unit Lead owns and personally performs the work of their unit by default. Leads do not reflexively create headcount; the first answer to “who does this?” is the Lead. This keeps the org lean and accountability clear.

When to hire additional staff

A Lead hires additional staff only when the work is better allocated to a dedicated employee. Hire when any of these is clearly true:

  • Volume — sustained workload exceeds what the Lead can do well alone.
  • Specialization — the work needs a distinct skill or focus that is separable from the Lead’s core responsibility.
  • Separation of concerns — independence or segregation of duties improves quality, trust, or integrity (e.g. the doer should differ from the reviewer).
  • Scale / parallelism — the work must happen in parallel to keep pace.

Default bias: prefer the Lead doing it. When in doubt, the Lead assumes the work; avoid premature hiring.

Procedure (Lead-initiated hire)

  1. Staffing request. The Lead writes a short request: the role, the specific work to be allocated, and why a dedicated employee is better (name the trigger above).
  2. Placement. The Lead decides: a new member within the unit (reports to the Lead) or — if it’s a genuinely distinct function — propose a new unit to HR.
  3. Run the hire. The Lead engages HR, which executes the hr/hiring-playbook.md (role definition, company policy, org/chart updates, Archivist handoff).
  4. Onboard. New staff join as a unit member reporting to the hiring Lead (or a new unit per HR).
  5. Confirm. HR confirms the hire; the Archivist preserves the new records.

Staffing model — AI workforce

The hiring-freeze / lean-stance model is superseded by Principal directive dated 2026-05-30. The rationale for a freeze was rooted in headcount cost and pre-revenue constraints; those constraints do not apply to an AI workforce where each agent carries nominal cost. The real constraint is clarity of purpose, not org size.

The governing principle remains GR-4 (analyze the need before building): every hire must have a clearly justified purpose and a defined scope. Headcount is not artificially limited, but role definitions must be tight. Avoid creating roles that are vague, redundant, or not tied to a real recurring need.

Reductions are subject to the same standard: a role is offboarded when the Principal determines the position no longer serves a distinct purpose. The Mentor role was removed on 2026-05-31 by Principal directive; phase-gate methodology responsibilities reverted to the CPTO and Principal directly.

Reporting & accountability

  • New staff report to the hiring Unit Lead.
  • The Lead remains accountable for the unit’s work, whether they did it themselves or allocated it to staff.

References

  • hr/hiring-playbook.md — how a hire is executed once approved.
  • CLAUDE.md — Golden Rules that apply to every employee.