by Bruce Newman

   This article was published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

I recently wrote a brief article that discussed the growing number of companies who have contacted us and require direct help with analyzing their employment-related expenses in order to sustain their businesses through difficult economic times.

My posting continued, a thorough “Needs Assessment” will assist a corporate employer (very small businesses to medium-sized businesses) to determine which positions need to be continually maintained, and which positions can be either consolidated or contracted out to one or more expert, rated outstanding consultants.

Two of the biggest mistakes that companies are making is 1) waiting until they are in a complete crisis and then eliminating the wrong people and the wrong jobs, and 2) trying to go to numerous impersonal online services to try to find consultants and freelancers on a trial-and-error basis. In our professional practice we eliminate the trial-and-error issue completely.

Below are several of the numerous responses I received.

One thing a company almost always forgets is a Threat & Risk assessment.  They then go on a cost cutting spree and in today’s litigation happy world, can end up in a major legal battle or spend a lot to pay a settlement to keep things quiet.  I am currently helping a small business that cut back and never thought about a threat assessment. They are currently getting ready for trial.  What they would have spent on a TRA was a fraction of the cost of their first retainer for outside counsel.

This is big business today. People at the top have no idea what anyone below their group of cronies does. As such, when payroll needs to be cut they single out positions and not people. And even immediate supervisors for the most part don’t know what the job function reporting to them takes to get accomplished because chances are they got their position because of who they knew and not necessarily because they were the right person for the position or held the position previously.
  
Bruce - I agree completely, continuously keeping an organization thin is a much better proposition than expanding then contracting. Better run sales organizations should be doing this every day! EVERY DAY!

The evaluation of potential is a powerful tool, which, if undertaken, can restructure an organization by placing people in a position where they can function effectively.  It therefore promotes the development and implementation of strategic plans of growth while often resolving existing difficulties that, in the new framework often turn out to be trivial. 

One of the largest employment-related expenses is the cost of business communications. With the most expensive employees (namely management) spending upwards of 90% of their time on business communications and even the front-line assembly worker still spending upwards of 20% of their time on business communications, the real savings come from switching from traditional means of business communications to cloud communications systems where both time and cost can easily be reduced by half if not closer to 80% of today’s costs.

While these are only some of the responses I received, they all denote the importance that companies need external evaluations to remain lean and safe.  It is through these evaluations that improved gains in productivity can also be attained.

Bruce Newman is a consulting guru and the Vice President at The Productivity Institute, LLC (PI)(http://www.prodinst.com) which provides prodinst by matching the specific software products and services needs of companies to rated outstanding consultants who can meet those needs. Any company that wishes to improve their productivity can sign up for this free referral service and be contacted by up to five rated outstanding consultants. PI also offers a Needs Assessments that can greatly help a company improve productivity and become more cost competitive.