The sentiment floating around a lot of companies is that they are under-staffed and short on resources. In a growth environment, it is often true. Just look at the number of open positions a company is actively trying to fill, and you may instantly agree that they are short on resources. But what about after they fill the jobs? Does the sentiment change? Rarely.
Think about the relationship between resources, skills, and product. It is not just about having warm bodies in seats. The second element of the equation is ‘skills.’ New hires may have experience elsewhere, but most new hires are lacking the skills to immediately become productive in a new environment. Throwing a new employee into the fray and hoping for the best is inefficient, usually ineffective, and sets a negative tone from the start of the employee’s tenure that often leads to frustration and disillusionment with their new job. Progressive companies recognize this fact, and implement rigorous onboarding programs. These companies enjoy much faster contribution from new hires, and typically benefit from improved employee retention.
Years ago, my company was acquired by a hyper-growth company that was adding tons of employees every month. To meet the need, they built a training facility and established a comprehensive onboarding program. Managers knew that when an applicant accepted an offer, they would start their career with weeks of training and onboarding. Managers and peers were an integral part of the program, so while the new-hire was learning the company, they were also developing working relationships with their new teammates, but they were not permitted to jump into their new job until the program was completed. It was a huge investment for the company, but the return was even bigger - a well trained, loyal workforce.
The need for training does not stop with onboarding. There also needs to be an ongoing program of continuous improvement in professionalism and skills for the existing staff. Training is not a one-and-done process. Employees want to continue to learn and grow and advance their skills, and employee retention is often predicated on creating a learning environment. Just as we plan for vacations and paid time off, employers should plan for professional development and education, and recognize that some part of every year needs to be set aside for skills development. It is far more cost-effective to ‘grow’ your employees than it is to replace them.
From the company’s perspective, the greater the skills, knowledge and experience of the team, the more efficient they become. This circles back to resources because the more efficient the team, the fewer resources it takes to get the job done. Skills and resources are directly related. Instead of just throwing bodies at a problem, investing in skills and training is a cost effective path to addressing at least some of the resource challenge.
However, even in an environment where all of the open positions have been filled, and there is an onboarding and ongoing training program, so everyone is at the peak of their skills, there may still be a cry for resources. This is where we need to look at the business more critically. What is it about our business that requires so many resources?
Product is the third leg of the triangle. Product in this case refers to the broad sense of the term which is your company’s offering - services, widgets, applications, whatever. A lot of the drain on resources is a result of having to use people to “putty” over product limits and shortcomings. It is typical in the early days of a product maturity curve to require more ‘people putty.’ However, as the offering matures, the need should diminish. Studying the resource intensive aspects of an offering will provide a roadmap for product management to guide a portion of the product development investment to improve the efficiency of product delivery.
Start by imagining the ideal view of human resources required for the optimal business model and customer experience. Every step away from this magical ideal that requires people to get the job done is an opportunity to evaluate resource efficiency at the product level. Just like investing to improve the skills of your team, investing to improve the resource demands of your product will improve the bottom line. There is a pretty straight line from product to resources, and designing our offerings to minimize the resources required to deliver success is an important element of defining our product investments. The more our people have the skills and knowledge, the more efficient they are, and the fewer people it takes to achieve our goals. Equally so, the closer our product comes to our ideal vision of efficiency, the fewer people it takes to deliver our product, and the more efficient we become, so once again fewer resources required.
What is striking is how simple some of the dialog is about having too few resources, but how deep the real analysis has to go in order to optimize the interplay between resources, skills and product in order to make priority decisions about where to invest. It is easy for every area of the company that feels under-resourced to jump to the conclusion to hire more people on their team. But, at a macro level, that is rarely the best way to balance the skills-resources-product equation. Great companies understand how to collaborate across departmental lines to go past the simple ‘give me people’ stage and truly figure out what is best for the business. Sometimes, instead of hiring a few more consultants to implement your product, it makes more sense to dedicate a couple of engineers for a sprint or two to actually make the product easier to implement. Invest in the product and reduce the need for more consultants, or better yet, make it so easy the customers can do it themselves without requiring any consultants.
To solve the resources puzzle, work all of the elements of the people, skills, and product equation. Your bottom line will thank you.