Trimming Costs Without Losing Productivity

In today’s economy, it has become ever apparent important to keep your labor costs down while still providing for production, sales, marketing and customer service. With the labor market becoming saturated with workers due to layoffs, it is time to ensure that your workforce is performing at optimum levels and that all cylinders are firing. Here’s a few tips:

Manage Performance

Your employees need to know what is expected of them and how they measure up to those expectations. This can be done by first notifying  your employees that times are indeed tough and that means everyone needs to work harder towards the goal of maintaining a successful business, which in turn benefits them, as they will be more likely to keep their jobs.

Make sure they understand the performance standards you require and the consequences of failure. Once you have established this foundation, it is important to monitor performance and conduct regular meetings with your employees, as a group and individually to inform them of any shortcomings, encourage their good performance and update them as to the company’s situation.

Do not let poor performers drag your business down. Deal with problems quickly and effectively.

Trim Labor Cost

Many companies are trimming their work schedules in order to reduce costs and keep their current workforce. Employees may not want their pay to be reduced, but an explanation that this is necessary to avoid layoffs should help to maintain morale. There are several ways to accomplish this. Here are a few examples.

• Switch non-critical employees to 4 day – 8 hours weeks
• Shorten the day by 1-2 hours for non-critical employees
• Ask employees to take unpaid leave or furlough’s
• Switch some workers to a part-time basis

These suggestions need to be carefully considered to avoid issues with discrimination and other problems associated with changes in pay, status or work hours.

In general, it is necessary to take whatever steps are needed to prevent a catastrophic failure of the business. It is Champion’s goal to help you make whatever changes are necessary to keep your business operating efficiently without causing legal problems or negatively impacting employee moral.

Please contact Champion to discuss your particular situation before deciding on how to proceed.