Put Some Meat On Your Skeleton Staff

Put Some Meat On Your Skeleton Staff

on Aug 11, 2018 in Small business

When most companies are trying to improve their financial situation, especially in the first few years of their operations, most of them only hire a skeleton staff. Never heard the phrase “skeleton staff” before? It basically means the minimum number of employees needed to run a business. Usually, a large company will go down to just a skeleton staff during the summer or over the Christmas period when lots of employees have taken their annual leave and are off work. However, some entrepreneurs choose to hire only a skeleton staff while they are in the initial stages of their startup so that they don’t have such a large payroll. This can help them cut down significantly on the company’s expenses.

However, you won’t be able to keep on operating with just a skeleton staff forever. Even though using the minimum number of employees helps the company take care of the basics and can help it tick over, you will find that there is no way you can expand the business or grow its profits with hardly any workers on board. Do you think it’s time you tried to build on your skeleton staff and add some meat to its bones? Here are a few options.


Consider Using Freelancers

If you think you need some more employees but don’t have enough money to hire some full-time recruits, it’s worth considering freelancers and contractors. These often work out a lot cheaper than full-time employees. That’s because you aren’t obliged to pay for any holiday or sick days that your freelancers take. Not only that, though, but you don’t have to contribute to their pensions or health insurance either. Another bonus is that you only pay freelancers for the work they do and can hire them for individual projects. So, you won’t be wasting money when you aren’t using them. If you think that going with some freelancers is the best option for you, you can always look for some more on websites like Ozlance.

Hire More Full-Time Employees

Of course, if you can afford to hire a new full-time team, then it’s a better idea to go down this route. That’s because full-time workers are often a lot more dedicated to the company as it will be their sole source of work. Freelancers often take on more than one project at once, so there could be times when you find that some contractors aren’t as dedicated as you might like. When you decide it’s the right time to start the hiring process, you might want to use some of the various staffing solutions for employers that many recruitment companies now offer. It’s also worth posting your job advert on your own website as well as job boards. That way, more people will come across it, which should increase the number of applicants you receive from some of the top talent.

Improve Employee Holiday Scheduling

Some companies find that they have to rely on their skeleton staff more than what they would like to because of poor holiday scheduling. As previously mentioned, this is most likely to occur during the summer and over Christmas. There are some ways to beat vacation scheduling stress, though. First of all, it’s worth investing in a scheduling software. You just need to enter in everyone’s booked time off so that you can clearly see who is off and when. If it looks like there are going to be a lot of people off at one particular time, you might then want to stop anyone else from booking days off during this period. Another solution is to ban employees from taking their annual leave during busy periods and when you will need all hands on deck.

 

Boost Employee Productivity

If your employees aren’t as productive as they should be, it may start to feel like you are running a skeleton staff even when you aren’t. This will, of course, be very frustrating for you as it could be unnecessarily holding back your company as a whole. To solve this, though, you just need to try and boost your team’s productivity. Here are a few ways to go about doing that.

 

Hire The Right People In The First Place

If you make mistakes in the recruitment process, you might find that you end up employing the wrong kinds of people for your jobs. These could be individuals who don’t have quite the right set of skills or experience that the role requires. As a result, they won’t be able to perform to the best of their abilities. So, try and come up with an effective hiring process that allows you to bring the most skilled and motivated individuals onto your team in the first place, and you shouldn’t be plagued with productivity issues in the first place.

 

Challenge People

People love a good challenge! It brings out their competitive side and encourages them to always do better. If you challenge your employees, then you should see an increase in both productivity and motivation. One great way to challenge your employees is to set them goals that they can work towards. A little friendly competition can also be quite entertaining and good for productivity, so you might want to set the odd team challenge every now and then!

 

 

Regularly Review Performance

It’s also a good idea to start doing regular employee reviews and evaluations if you don’t do so already. If you review an employee’s performance very positively, it can spur them on to continue to do very well. Negative assessments aren’t always a bad thing either. In fact, they can also motivate employees to try a little harder and improve their performance. Ideally, you should hold your employee reviews every three months so that there are four of them throughout the year.

 

Hopefully, all of the tips in this blog post can help you add a little more meat to all the bones of your skeleton staff. Once you have done, you should find that the strain is taken off your company.

Hopefully, all of the tips in this blog post can help you add a little more meat to all the bones of your skeleton staff. Once you have done, you should find that the strain is taken off your company.

 

 

Image credit:  Pexels.com

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