When Is Hiring More Help Necessary?
The Decision To Add Staff Should Be Data-Driven
Many shops in our industry are experiencing a growth in sales. As customers spent more time at home, they concentrated on improving their living spaces. This increased demand means opportunity for the industry, but it also brings challenges. In order to satisfy customers, we must be able to produce projects in less than two weeks. For many of us, that means finding more help.
“Knowing when to add staffing is often a difficult decision…”
Knowing when to add staffing is often a difficult decision for shop owners. Like almost every business decision, adding staffing should not be a guess or gut feeling. Instead, it should be based on some kind of data.
Producing projects is actually done is steps. Cutting moulding, assembling frames, cutting mats, stretching canvasses, and fitting together all the materials are examples of the small steps needed to create a finished project. If you know how long each step takes, you can determine how many hours are required in production each day, week and month. Then you can compare the hours of staffing you currently have in production to the hours needed to build projects. If you consistently need more staffing to complete the workload in your shop, then it is time to add more help.
One mistake many business owners make is trying to fully train new staff members. That requires a lot of time and energy. Instead, consider training new employees only in areas where you cannot keep up with the workload. Maybe the new staff member is only trained to assemble and fit projects in the beginning. Then as time goes on, other areas can be added to their training.
The reason most shops are reluctant to hire is because of the time training takes. Shop owners are already busy, so taking on the work involved to properly train someone can be overwhelming. However, the consequence of too little staffing is often lost business and disappointed customers. If you need some help with training your staff, the KB Consulting Training Manual might be a way to reduce your training time – you can check it out here.
The new resurgence of demand in the custom framing industry is a great thing, but we must be able to meet this new demand in a way that keeps customers coming back. Adding the proper help to ensure timely completion of projects and great customer service is vital to our new success. Let’s keep this new demand rolling.
