Staffed

Staffed is the past participle of the verb staff and is commonly used as an adjective to describe an organization, facility, event, or operation that is supplied with personnel. As a verb form, it can also appear in phrases such as the company staffed the event, meaning it provided staff for it.

In everyday use, a staffed desk, booth, or office indicates that employees are present to assist customers or perform duties. A staffed hospital ward has nurses and clinicians on site; a staffed security checkpoint has personnel monitoring access. The opposite, unstaffed, implies no personnel on site. Staffing, in turn, refers to the process of recruiting, assigning, and managing personnel resources.

Etymology and usage: staff originally denotes a group of employees; adding the suffix -ed yields staffed to indicate the provision of such personnel. The noun staffing covers the ongoing act or process of supplying and managing staff.

Related terms include staff member (or staffer), staffing levels, and shortages. The historical terms manned or crewed have been used to describe facilities with people, though manned is now often avoided in favor of more neutral language such as staffed or crewed.

See also: staffing, unstaffed, manned, crewed.