Pay and carry is a business which operates using franchises. They deal with groceries and related products. The company provides these services to citizens of respective places within the country but their head office employs about 45 people. Considering that the head office sets the benchmarking standards for the rest of the franchises, the number of employees within the branches are expected to be less than that. Irrespective of the number of employees, the company strives to ensure that the customers get quality products and that in some stores, there is a large variety of products being advertised and sold. This makes it important for the employees to work continuously, especially in the event that the grocery outlet has a variety of products being sold. The continuous profit margin, which allows for the continued growth and opening of more branches, is, therefore, more likely to be a consequence of the work of the employees given the standards expected for each of the branches.
The third largest number of businesses in Australia lies in the medium size companies. Medium sized companies employ between 20 and 199 people on average (Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, 2016). They are among the two top businesses within the country with respect to their annual turnover as compared to the small and nano businesses. Pay n carry lies within the lower range of the medium businesses when evaluated using the number of employees in the head office. Giving 45 people the mandate to ensure efficiency in the more than thirty outlets results in the issue of understaffing. Understaffing develops from the case where minimum employees are expected to handle more work and with more efficiency.
Considering that the company is growing, and it has not yet established quality roots within, the employment of employees on need basis is unavoidable. Some companies use the chance to employ freelancing employees under temporary terms thus avoiding the overhead for employing them (Muhammed, 2018). Employing a minimum number of permanent employees ensures that the employers can deliver minimum payments and benefits. This allows the employer to invest more money into expanding the business and into providing quality products for the customers. In the pay n carry case, this appears to be the situation. There is need to reassess the number of employees within the organization. The number should be evaluated using several factors including the minimum number of people required for the job, the peak sales periods for the franchises, the overall profit margin from the sales, and the optimum number of employees to work with considering the welfare of both employees and the employers.
Understaffing issues.
Most businesses face a short number of employees during specific times of the year. These periods include the time when the business is low and there is need for laying off some workers as a way of maintaining the economic relevance of the businesses. A temporary understaffing issue is manageable and it does not have a lot of issues, but when it is left to run for a long time, it can degenerate into a load of issues for the employees and the employer therein (Higuera, 2019). Continued understaffing demands too much from the employees present and this makes them to feel detached from the company. This could potentially impact the way in which the company reaches out to new clients and it therefore has an impact on the current and potential profit-making abilities of the company.
One significant issue with understaffing is the need for the existing employees to accomplish their tasks and those of the missing employees. The employees in an understaffed business have more to handle as compared to the employees where the employment ratios are observed. This is due to the fact that irrespective of the number of employees, the business is only sustained when the full services required are rendered to the clients. The employees within are, therefore, tasked with ensuring that the work needed is done and delivered in a timely way. Considering that the work done is more than the standards set for the employees, understaffing often results in overworking of the existing group.
Considering that the roles in the work place need to be met, the few employees present are given more pressure to make sure they finish the tasks needed on time. The pressure is given to make sure that the employees fulfil the duties within limited time spans even though they are understaffed. In the pay n carry case, the employees within the head office would be expected to ensure complete oversight of the branches even though they also need to strategically plan for the overall growth and development of the retailing chain. The head office is responsible for determining the underlying issues which affect the performance of the respective branches, while also determining the probable causes of enhanced profit making in the branches that perform well. That workload needs more employees to ensure efficiency considering that the decisions made there impact the welfare of the rest of the branches. Employing a minimum number of employees within the retail branches reduces the ability of the existing employees to efficiently serve a large number of clients. The outlets have multiple products and the products need respective workers who can assess their quality and assure the existing clientele of the same while convincing the potential clients about the quality of services accorded in the place.
Having fewer employees within the work place makes the existing ones to have multiple roles within the retail. While the employees may successfully address all the concerns of the clients, their welfare appears to diminish as they develop exhaustion on the job due to being overworked (Balle, 2019). Overtiredness and physical exhaustion generate when the employees continuously perform duties which require more than one person to perfect over a long period of time. This reduces the ability and productivity of the employees over the consecutive time periods which follow. The morale of the employees to work when they are tired is also relatively low and this results in a drop in the competitiveness of the employees when providing their services in the workplace.
Tired employees have a high potential to make errors in their line of duty. Exhausted employees have lower abilities to be innovative and this lowers their ability to focus on errors either in the pricing of the goods and services, or in the delivery of the same (5 Ways Being Understaffed At Work Can Hurt An Organization, 2019). Businesses with error prone employees risk making losses considering that the existing employees will need motivation to try and revive their working spirit while more money is also needed to research the potential errors which could negatively impact the economic and social situation of the company. Allowing the understaffing issues to continue risks the integrity of the company and the desire of future employees to work within the place in as much as the businesses generate short-term profits.
Resolving the issues
While having some employees to handle general roles within the organization can ensure exposure and result in overall growth and development, hiring employees who have specialized in the roles often results into more efficiency and service delivery (Hutchinson, 2017). The people with specific knowledge about the way specific aspects of the business should be run enhance the ability of the wellbeing of the businesses and this facilitates better terms for the employers. Even though the employers have to pay more for the specialized employees, the returns favor the employer, the employee and the client. The employees benefit from working in the fields they are comfortable working in. this allows them time and the resources to be innovative. It also allows them to provide better services to the clients resulting in more prospective clients. Client satisfaction results in better payment terms to the employers and this compensates for the money spent in the hiring.
Strategic planning is the next aspect when dealing with in understaffing. Planning ensures that the roles are clearly defined for the current and future branches of the business (Innesa, 2017). This means that at any moment, the expected number of employees is clear to the respective managers and they can easily identify the areas in which they need to optimize and add or reduce employees. With clear roles defined, the employers should find a way of integrating the incoming employees in the old stations as a way of imparting the culture of the company on them. Redeploying them later to the new branches ensures that they take the culture with them and this helps in the creation and maintenance of an identity for the company across all branches. The identity facilitates maintained client satisfaction especially for clients who travel to different towns with branches of the same. Strategic planning ensures that the employees only deliver the work required of them. This ensures that overworking issues are resolved while maintaining the innovativeness and creativity of the employees. With employee satisfaction, the employer has fewer budgets for recruitment and training of new employees given that the overall employee turnover is low.
References
5 Ways Being Understaffed At Work Can Hurt An Organization. (2019). Retrieved from mitrefinch: https://mitrefinch.com/blog/5-ways-being-understaffed-at-work-can-hurt-organization/
Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. (2016). Small Business Counts: Small Business in the Australian Economy.
Balle, L. (2019, April). Understaffing issues in the work place. Retrieved from Bizfluent: https://bizfluent.com/info-8483648-understaffing-issues-workplace.html
Higuera, V. (2019). What Occurs When an Organization Is Understaffed for a Prolonged Period of Time? Retrieved from Chron: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/occurs-organization-understaffed-prolonged-period-time-34557.html
Hutchinson, L. (2017, December 18). 6 Common Staffing Problems and Their Solutions. Retrieved from Liberty Staffing Services: https://www.libertystaffing.ca/blog/6-common-staffing-problems-and-their-solutions
Innesa. (2017, September 16). 3 Common Staffing Problems and How to Fix Them. Retrieved from Boutique Recruiting: https://www.boutiquerecruiting.com/3-common-staffing-problems-how-fix-them/
Muhammed, A. (2018, July 31). Four Statistics Showing How Business Can Benefit From The Gig Economy. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/abdullahimuhammed/2018/07/31/four-statistics-showing-how-business-can-benefit-from-the-gig-economy/#4d2ef7f4752f