If you’re considering recruiting 1 or 2 more staff, before you do so, have you really considered why your current staff can’t cope and asked yourself WHY you think you need to recruit another member in to your team ?
Have you considered if the team need to work together better, is there some technology, or extra piece of kit, which will help them get through their work better, can you encourage the team to cooperate more, change the way the team works together, rather than just add one or two more people to the team in a month or two, depending on how soon the new people be interviewed, selected, work their current notice and start working with you? Then they would need training up and all this could take 2-3 months.
Does the existing team deliver a high level of errors or rework (10-20%?), because they aren’t delivering 100% of their work, to standard, first time? So is the team better focusing on getting it 100% right first time and would it not be better getting the team some quality training to eliminate their rework first, rather than just add another person who will take more time to train up?
Does the team leader need a bit more support or training from you? Does the team leader need a bit more expert training, or is she still comfortable in managing her team and training up a new person?
- Is the team suffering Ups & Downs in the amount of work get through each month, Is there a particular reason for the Ups & Downs?
- Could their physical work environment be adapted to improve how they work and the amount of work they deliver each week, each month?
- Could some of the team’s mundane work be taken off them and done better by someone else, like restocking or paperwork or do you need to stop them attending so many meetings?
The cost of employing another person is £20-30,000 once all recruitment costs, salary and indirect costs like training and extra office costs are included, so even if you only spend 1/3rd (£10,000) of that, getting your team to improve the way they work, to work Smarter, that’s still quite a big saving? So, it’s definitely worth trying to get more out of changing the way the team works than just employing another one or two more people?
Is your business currently measuring how much work the team currently delivers each week or month, so that you can actually measure how much extra another person would add to the amount of work they deliver? Are your reporting systems good enough to measure the extra team output employing one more person would contribute, which would help you assess the need for another person next time?
If you need any help with making our teams work Smarter, more efficiently, assessing the extra value your current team could deliver without the extra person, contact us?