How to Determine When to Hire More Employees
by Larry Slusser on February 19th, 2008
Determining when to hire more employees can be very complex; but if your current employees are working longer hours, skipping lunches and breaks, or cancelling vacation plans, then it’s time to hop on the ol’ cluetrain and start increasing your staffing levels. How do you know how many more employees to hire? Should you consider temporary employees versus permanent employees? The answers to these questions are largely based on your industry and the trends within the industry, as well as your individual business’s needs. Here are some tips on determining when it is right to increase your staffing levels or just shift around the workload.
Identify the problem areas. Are there inefficiencies in time management, or are your employees truly overworked? If the workload can be transferred either permanently or temporarily to existing employees, talk with your employees to determine where the greatest need is and what is not getting accomplished that needs to be dealt with. Enlisting the help of your existing employees in determining workload will allow them to be a part of the solution rather than feel a part of the problem. A decrease in performance across-the-board will also give an indication employees being overworked. Often if the performance of one or more employees is slipping, and they have normally been great performers, that is an indication that they are being overworked and additional employees are needed.
Just ask. Another way to determine if you need to hire more employees is through the comments or complaints made by employees. This can be through a casual conversation or through a formal complaint/feedback procedure you have established. Make sure that you have your finger on the pulse of the organization. If you are hearing complaints about working conditions on a regular basis, this could mean that employees are being overworked and may be stressed.
Employee health should be of utmost importance. An increase in your group health insurance claims could help to identify that your staff is overworked and it is time to hire additional help. An increase in doctor visits due to stress definitely indicates a problem There are also some employees that will choose not to express their dissatisfaction verbally-meaning they will internalize the issues, creating physical problems.
Too busy to hire more employees. Isn’t this a catch-22 situation, if there ever was one. You need more employees because you’re so busy, but you’re too busy to go through the hiring process. A financial indication is if your organization has been too busy to access financial resources such as a credit line. This would indicate that the organization is too busy, or that it lacks the talent of individuals within the organization to know what to do with the credit line or funding. The financial resources available to organizations can help with forward progress of the organization. If you do determine that your organization lacks the right mix of talent, consider using the funding available to you to recruit the talent needed to propel your organization to the next level.
Training issues. Another tip is if the organization is training too much or too little. Training and development is imperative to the success of an organization. However, if there is a significant amount of training occurring, then that could be indicative of the lack of skills within the organization. On the flip side, if there is not enough training where skills can be developed or enhanced, you are doing a disservice to your employees and ultimately to the organization.
There is no single situation to determine a need to increase staffing levels. If there are a few things going on that have not been factors or problems before, then it is time to closely review workloads and the need for either increasing staffing levels or shifting responsibilities. Continued problems with staffing levels can be detrimental to the overall success of your business.