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How to Know When to Expand Your Workforce

14 March 2018, 16:40 CET

Workforce management is one of a business owner's most important tasks, as it determines productivity, morale, and profitability. If your business is starting to grow, you might suddenly be sensing that the time has come to hire new employees. However, this is no easy task. Here's how to know when to expand your workforce.

Speak to Your Employees

If you want to identify if your current employees are being overworked, you should speak to your staff individually. Ask if they have any concerns regarding their role and schedule, and how they manage their tasks each day. Once you have gained their feedback, look at their attendance record and productivity indicators, which can confirm their claims. For example, monitoring their task lists can help you gain an insight into how they are managing their projects. As a result, you could either reorganise their day, restructure their roles, or hire additional members of staff.

Identify if You Have the Finances to Hire Staff

It is impossible to hire employees if you do not have enough money in the bank to do so. If the move is integral to the company, you must find a way to expand your workforce without negatively impacting the company's finances. For example, a fixed or flexible peer to peer lending loan might be the ideal solution, as you can borrow money to grow your team and, in turn, your business.

Support Your New Business

A business loan can also help to support your new business. For example, it can be difficult to make a positive first impression on a client if you do not have enough staff on your team, so a loan could help you hire new employees to allow your company to grow and maintain satisfaction. Yet you should only hire new employees if you have an increasing workload; otherwise, you should hire contract or temporary employees to help run your business.

Introduce New Skills into Your Company

Expanding your offering could help you increase annual profitability. To do so, you might either need to increase your existing employees' skillsets or you could hire additional employees with new or different skills. Yet employees with advanced skills may cost much more money, so you must be willing to offer an attractive salary to attract the best candidates for a position. However, by doing so, you could receive an excellent return on your investment, as it could help you to increase customers or clients, as well as satisfaction.

Overspending on Overtime

Are you paying your existing members of staff overtime to complete tasks? Not only might you be overworking your employees, but it might not be the best financial decision for your business. Review your employee expenditure to identify exactly how much money you are spending on overtime each week, month, and year. It might be cheaper to hire new employees rather than paying the current overtime rate to your existing staff members. Only offer overtime to employees on occasion, or hire additional part-time staff to avoid overstretching your team and budget.

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