Bare essentials
The constant focus on ‘cost cutting’ has reduced organizations to the bare-essentials as far as staffing is concerned. If, as a member or staff, you look anything like superfluous to everyday operations then you’re out of here!
In too many organizations, people are doing at least one-and-a-half jobs and sometimes two. Heads have been cut but the workload has not been reduced.
It is easy to shed staff. You give them their ‘pink slips’ and they are out of here. But this doesn’t change the workload or the required skills and experience (competencies) required to succeed. All it does is reduce the staff resources available and, often, the level of competency available—a double whammy.
Too few staff to improve
Then along comes an organization that wants you to use your own (overloaded) staff to improve your business. The payoff, they claim, is a reduction the workload and an uplift in the staff’s competencies.
Great, but how do you get there from here when your staff are already overloaded?
Backfilling
Backfilling. Finding contract staff to fill in for your own staff in their old jobs as they work on improving your business.
The good thing is that backfilling staffs are usually far less expensive than the more commonly used alternative – consulting staffs.
Sometimes backfilling requires a series of staff maneuvers to get the right people in the right position for the project’s duration. You may have to move staff member A to cover staff member B’s job as it is easier to backfill role A than role B.
Increased results
But it is worth it. When your own staff define and design the changes required they are committed to making them successful.
The time to results goes down, resistance to change goes down while the value of the results goes up.
Low-cost backfilling allows you to achieve greater results in less time and for less cost.
It really is that simple.
See what in-house staff have achieved:
