Why you should always be slightly overstaffed
Most businesses will have peaks and troughs. In our accountancy practice, we have two peaks and two dips during our year. We’ve fine-tuned our strategy over the years to ensure during these dips we schedule in other work and work ‘on’ the business internally.
Your business will likely to have its peaks and troughs. It may be incredibly seasonal, or it may not be so obvious.
Seasonal adjustments aside though, demand and capacity will rarely match exactly and when they do it is unlikely to be for long. The trick I believe is to always be “slightly overstaffed.”
Yes, it’s slightly inefficient, but let’s face it if you have a quieter period, there are always tons of “important but not urgent” things that need doing in your business that will increase numbers of customers, make things more efficient or just free up a bit of your time.
And if you’re not “slightly overstaffed,” then when you get a busy period some of your customers won’t be serviced properly, will get grumpy and may leave. The danger is that demand will fall, you’ll then reduce staff levels more and the cycle will repeat until eventually there is only you left!
For more detail on why you should always be slightly overstaffed, download your exclusive copy of Chapter 15 of my book, Accidental Millionaires: The secret mindset successful business owner share with sporting legends.
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