- There is an argument to be made that staffing is not only integral to a companies success. However, the idea that it is the highest priority when it comes to whether or not a company is going to be successful in the business world is not necessarily true in all scenarios. While it can be argued that people as resources are vital to a company, it does need to be noted that people can be circumnavigated, or at least have a mitigated impact on the overall business model a company might have when presenting their products to consumers. For instance, when looking at a companies service offering, businesses can employ low-cost accommodation strategies to deal with their customers and lessen the impact their employees have on the customer experience whilst instead putting a heightened focus on their products. This is both a product design process and a marketing ploy, as making customers aware that they need to be a part of their service experience when enjoying the products they consume. Examples of this could be buffets or frozen yogurt bars. Some organizations might choose to use these options to help and deal with capacity issues. If they can not hire enough workers to help out with high demand, or workers that meet the required criteria for the positions, then some businesses might have a better time changing the product medium instead to alleviate capacity concerns. Another reason companies might want to focus on things other than staffing is if the company culture isn’t particularly strong. A lot of part-time jobs come to mind for me, as with workers having high turnover rates, staffing high quality picks isn’t always the priority when you need replacements, the learning curve isn’t that steep, and the job itself doesn’t require a culture to really keep the employees they do have hired invested in working there.
- When the customer relies more on self-service options, businesses only need to concern themselves with finding employees to act as cashiers and/or cooks as opposed to additionally hostesses and waiters. By doing this, it can greatly mitigate the impact employees might have on a customer’s mindset towards your product and still be quite successful. This is essential if there is a concern that employee behaviors can potentially harm customer experiences when visiting an establishment, as well as potentially diversifying your product from the competition by presenting it through a different medium. Lastly, costs are also avoided, as a company saves money by eliminating potential wages and the hiring/firing costs by removing unnecessary roles. These funds can then be reinvested back into the company to help fund other departments like R&D for new products, enhanced marketing budgets, or managing inventory, further enhancing the overall business model. Some weaknesses however would include that it will not stop businesses from having bad customer experiences if those cashiers or chefs are mean though, and it also doesn’t solve any issues that might be happening behind the scenes when looking at employee cohesion when working together. This is also arguably very circumstantial and product-dependent. Staffing is still pretty important in most industries because not all products have the ability to be self-service and thus these methods wouldn’t work.
That was a really great