Many businesses across a range of industries find it really challenging to manage staffing throughout the year.
In peak periods it can be stressful finding the resources to meet all your staffing requirements, while during slow periods it can be financially challenging being over-resourced.
At Sidekicker, we work with thousands of businesses to help manage staffing requirements during growth periods or for that face seasonal fluctuations.
We provide access to a temporary workforce, so a business can scale up and down their resources as needed.
Here are four quick tips for making staffing easier.
1. Plan ahead
A good place to start is to estimate when your high demand and low demand periods are going to occur based on past experiences. Look at the data.
If you’re an agency, when did your clients increase their requirements? When did the work drop off?
For consumer products, when was there a peak in demand for your product? What is the best season to drive sales?
For the hospitality industry, what months do the majority of conferences take place at your venue?
When do corporate or private clients start to require catering?
All these factors can affect your resourcing requirements, and having these projected patterns mapped out can drastically improve your ability to plan staffing and resourcing in advance.
Knowing when you need to hire seasonal workers will ensure that when crunch time comes around you won’t be left understaffed and stressed.
2. Hire temporary staff
Temporary workers are invaluable for businesses that face changing staffing requirements based on projects, peak seasons and event-based work. Hiring temporary workers on casual contracts allows you to match staffing with what you need at the time.
For example, you may need to flex up your team for an event, a marketing promotion, a PR activation or an office administration role.
3. Use technology
Staffing is an age old problem and can be a logistical nightmare.
The good news is, there are several software tools and platforms that can help you manage it.
Whether you’re a hotel or caterer, consumer product, or event and promo agency, we recommend streamlining processes and tasks for an efficient and productive team environment.
If you’re still using Excel spreadsheets and Word documents, some tools you may find useful include: Trello for project management, Slack for team communication, Xero for easy payroll or Sidekicker for finding talent.
4. Hire people you’ve worked with before
If you’ve hired contract or temporary staff before, you’ll understand how beneficial it is to have the same people working for you the next time you need additional staff.
It’s more efficient to hire people who you’ve worked with before and who understand your business rather than starting from scratch.
When you come across great staff, be sure to take note of their details for future staffing needs.
If you’ve accessed staff through the Sidekicker platform, you can build a team of flexible, casual workers by adding staff to your private groups and then posting shifts directly to those people again in the future. Sidekicker can look after all of the employment and back office administration too.
You save time on training and on-boarding and get added peace of mind knowing the staff are reliable.