Having the right number of employees to run a business is a major issue for all employers. Obviously it is ideal to have an extra employee or two available any time things are busy, but it can be a fine line between having enough employees to get the job done and wasting money through over-staffing. There has been significant research on this topic and there is a good corpus of data and analytic methods available for many industries. That said, each sector and each business is unique, and individual managers must use their experience-based knowledge to schedule adequate staffing for all operating hours.
Instructions
1. Calculate specific productivity measures for employees if you have not done so already. These measures, such as the number of cookies a team of ten workers can produce in an eight-hour shift, or the number of words a copy-editor can edit per hour, enable you to quantify the number of employee hours required to get a specific amount of work completed.
2. Review the upcoming workload for your business on the short, medium and long term. You will combine this information with the productivity rates at which the work can be completed to calculate your staffing needs.
3. If you are running a production-related business, calculate how many employees it will take to accomplish the various projected workloads and plan your staffing on that basis. If you are running a service-related business, then calculate how many employees are needed to service customers over all business hours, including extra staffing seasonally and at other busy times based on your experience with the business.
4. Update and revise your staffing schedules at least weekly. Regular revisions incorporating new information on workload and employee schedules and availability helps avoid staffing snafus.
Tags: your staffing, calculate many, calculate many employees, many employees, work completed
