Imagine walking with a pebble in your shoe. Initially, it’s a minor annoyance, but over time, it becomes a nagging pain and impossible to ignore.
There are a lot of things we overlook every day that silently chip away at our efficiency and effectiveness. Your resourcing issues may be mere pebbles right now, but they can grow into real barriers to profitability.
In my conversations with service professionals as a Solutions Consultant at Accelo, a common theme emerges: Client demands and urgent projects inevitably take precedence over things like tracking time and optimizing utilization. Leaders like you end up reacting to your resourcing needs rather than proactively managing them.
This tunnel vision makes it hard to see the deeper truths about how much time and money you’re spending unnecessarily. Strategic resource management might feel like a luxury you can’t afford because you aren’t aware of how much it will save you, especially through the use of top resource management tools.
As with many other stagnant cycles in life, this one is worthwhile to break out of. I’ve seen many business leaders overcome a short-sighted approach to resourcing by addressing the following elements.
Whether you’re looking to get more productivity out of a lean team or trying to scale, make sure you correct these blind spots.
The question “How busy are we?” is one you might have so far answered superficially. To stay on top of resource capacity, you don’t just need to slide some tasks around on a calendar. You have to delicately balance workloads without overlooking or underbooking your team.
The tendency to favor certain employees or distribute work unfairly is common — and unintentional.
What’s the cost? Overestimating capacity can contribute to missed deadlines and lower-quality work. The burnout your employees experience can mean higher turnover, too. Underestimating capacity is just as dangerous, making it likely that you’ll experience low employee utilization or give up opportunities for additional projects.
You could be investing a lot more than you think in searching and recruiting, training and onboarding. These costs are not just monetary but also involve the time and energy necessary to integrate new talent.
As you bleed money expanding your team, you could neglect to engage and support long-standing employees and be leaking productivity.
What’s the cost? By failing to check this blind spot, you could experience rampant inefficiency, inadequate training and decreased profitability.
Providing clients with accurate expectations regarding deliverables is directly linked to how well you manage your resources. Without a clear understanding of your team’s capacity and the complexities of the project, setting timelines becomes a guessing game.
There are lots of reasons scope creep arises, but it should never be because you miscalculated how long it would take your team to give the client what they’re asking for.
What’s the cost? Clients who experience repeated delays and unmet expectations may lose confidence in your firm’s ability to deliver, potentially leading to lost business and a tarnished reputation.
Effectively utilizing your staff is more complex than it seems — it’s not just about applying available hours. It requires knowing each team member well, including their strengths, weaknesses and preferences, and aligning those with the appropriate projects.
If you’re tracking skills in a spreadsheet or not at all, you’re probably allocating work while missing key information about what you have and need.
What’s the cost? Not applying your team’s strengths well could impact how you price your services and lead to over- or undercharging clients. You also risk getting stuck in a pattern of thoughtless overutilization rather than smart but slightly lower utilization.
READ NEXT: How Accelo’s Utilization Data Drives Profitability
Hiring is a balancing act. Do you know with certainty whether to bring on full-time employees or contractors and when your project needs are about to overwhelm your capacity?
Not aligning your hiring strategy with your business strategy can lead to a workforce that’s ill-equipped to meet future challenges or take advantage of market opportunities. Ultimately, when and whom you hire directly affects how well your business grows.
What’s the cost? Hiring too soon or too often can inflate your labor costs unnecessarily, while hiring too late can overburden your current team. And going after new talent without considering current team dynamics can hurt everything from communication to client satisfaction.
If one or more of the above factors is secretly holding your business back, it’s time to take a good, hard look at the levers you can pull.
Conscious resource management starts with embracing technology and systems that offer a holistic view of your team’s capabilities, project requirements and client expectations. Dip your toes into this tech by exploring resource management templates as a way to stay informed and develop better habits around resourcing.
