When your business starts to expand, you might think the number of people you employ needs to expand alongside it. The only problem is the more people you employ, the more people you’re responsible for, and the more money you have to pay out in wages. If that increase in business turns out to be temporary, you could then be stuck paying out for another full-time member of staff that you no longer need.
Before you consider employing someone else, here are some of the ways you can expand your business without increasing your headcount.
Stay organized
You might think the biggest cause of wasted time in a workplace is your employees fooling around, turning up late, and not putting 100% effort and concentration into completing the tasks you’ve assigned to them. Whilst this might be the case with some workers, one much bigger problem that might waste every employees time is trying to stay organized without an effective system to help them.
Whether it’s picking stock to be packed up and sent to a customer, finding the ingredients to bake a cake for a customer, or even looking for the previous files of a client, a lack of organization will make all of these tasks much longer. In 2021, the best way to stay organized is to embrace technology in everything that you do. If you still use physical files, consider digitizing them so your colleagues can simply search for them on the computer.
Even these digital files need organizing, so make sure you have software installed onto every computer to help your employees find the right files quickly.
For specialist jobs, like language translation, you’ll can even install specialist translation management systems to help you through this taxing process. If you’re not sure what this system means, you’ll find the translation management system definition along with some great examples of how this software will help on the Smartling website.
Outsource non-critical jobs
Instead of employing new people to complete some of the extra tasks you’ll be facing once your business expands, why not see if you can remove some other tasks from your existing employees instead. By outsourcing non-critical jobs to external companies, your staff will have more time to focus on the most important tasks within the company.
For example, if you task your employees with keeping the office or your store clean throughout the day, why not see if you can employ the services of a cleaning company for a few hours instead. It’s highly likely that paying for the services of an external company will cost a lot less than hiring a new employee yourself.
Employ short-term when you need it
If you really do find you need to employ someone new to your team to cope with the increased workload, employ them on a short-term contract.
For example, if you find yourself busier during the festive period, employ someone to work for a few months before Christmas and during the January sales. If you find your sales drop after this period, you can let this contract run out and go back to your current size. If you do find you still need help, you could always extend this contract or even make them full time once you’re certain that the increase in workload is permanent.
