SmallBusinessNewz

Chances are you are already doing this, but on the other hand maybe you're not: take a good look at your company's workload, and evaluate your workforce.

This article was inspired by a recent trip to a certain electronics store that I have mentioned before as having notoriously "pushy" salespeople.

This past time I was in there was worse than ever. I felt like I was in the film "Dawn of the Dead" as salespeople gathered around me like zombies hungry for human flesh. This may seem like an extreme analogy, but unfortunately, it's not much of an exaggeration aside from the danger to my life.

Now, these salespeople are just doing their job, and I can't really blame them for the annoyance factor. I blame the way they are being managed. That said, it is still tempting to send these people on quests throughout the store searching for ridiculous requests just for personal amusement.

Yes, the management.

There were clearly few enough people in the store needing help, that they all were chomping (or "champing" if you prefer) at the bit to help me. This leads me to believe that perhaps this store is overstaffed. But maybe it's not even that. Maybe they were just overstaffed for this particular time of day or even day of the week.

It is important to pay attention to trends in your customer patronage on an ongoing basis, and get a feel for when you will actually need certain numbers of employees on the clock.

For some businesses, this is a non-issue, but for others, it is pretty much mandatory for efficiency. You are clearly losing money, paying wages to these employees that are not needed.

I'm not saying to just start letting people go, although if it is best for your business, I wouldn't discourage it, but having less employees working the same hours, may be an option worth considering.

Unfortunately, you may end up losing employees as a result of this anyway due to a lack of hours available for them, but if they quit as a result, somebody else is probably going to pick up the rest of their hours, and in this economy, it is probably not going to be incredibly difficult to find someone willing.

On the flipside...

This whole concept can of course go the opposite way. You may not have enough employees working at the same time. You may be seeing a nice profit come in for a while, but being understaffed can hurt your business just as badly.

If employees are having to take on more than their fair share of the workload, they are not going to be happy, and are  probably not going to stick around as a result.

Other people that are not going to be happy are the customers that are forced to wait because you don't have enough people on staff to help them in a convenient and timely fashion. Making customers unhappy is obviously not a good idea.

Thoughts?