The Small Enterprise Guide to People and Resource Management
Quickly start getting the right people, with the right skills, at the right time.
- 52% of small business owners agree that labor quality is their most important problem, and 76% of executives expect the talent market to get even more challenging.
- The problem? You can't compete on salary, training budgets are slim, you need people skilled in all areas, and even one resignation represents a large part of your workforce.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- The usual, reactive approach to workforce management is risky:
- Optimizing tactics helps you hire faster, train more, and negotiate better contracts.
- But fulfilling needs as they arise costs more, has greater risk of failure, and leaves you unprepared for future needs.
- In a small enterprise where every resource counts, in which one hire represents 10% of your workforce, it is essential to get it right.
Impact and Result
- Workforce planning helps you anticipate future needs.
- More lead time means better decisions at lower cost.
- Small Enterprises benefit most, since every resource counts.
The Small Enterprise Guide to People and Resource Management
Quickly start getting the right people, with the right skills, at the right time
Is this research right for you?
Research Navigation
Managing the people in your department is essential, whether you have three employees or 300. Depending on your available time, resources, and current workforce management maturity, you may choose to focus on the overall essentials, or dive deep into particular areas of talent management. Use the questions below to help guide you to the right Info-Tech resources that best align with your current needs.
| Question | If you answered "no" | If you answered "yes" |
|---|---|---|
|
Does your IT department have fewer than 15 employees, and is your organization's revenue less than $25 million (USD)? |
Review Info-Tech's archive of research for mid-sized and large enterprise clients. |
Follow the guidance in this blueprint. |
|
Does your organization require a more rigorous and customizable approach to workforce management? |
Follow the guidance in this blueprint. |
Review Info-Tech's archive of research for mid-sized and large enterprise clients. |
Analyst Perspective
Workforce planning is even more important for small enterprises than large organizations.
It can be tempting to think of workforce planning as a bureaucratic exercise reserved for the largest and most formal of organizations. But workforce planning is never more important than in small enterprises, where every individual accounts for a significant portion of your overall productivity.
Without workforce planning, organizations find themselves in reactive mode, hiring new staff as the need arises. They often pay a premium for having to fill a position quickly or suffer productivity losses when a critical role goes unexpectedly vacant.
A workforce plan helps you anticipate these challenges, come up with solutions to mitigate them, and allocate resources for the most impact, which means a greater return on your workforce investment in the long run.
This blueprint will help you accomplish this quickly and efficiently. It will also provide you with the essential development and knowledge transfer tools to put your plan into action.
Jane Kouptsova
Senior Research Analyst, CIO Advisory
Info-Tech Research Group
Executive Summary
Your Challenge
52% of small business owners agree that labor quality is their most important problem.1
Almost half of all small businesses face difficulty due to staff turnover.
76% of executives expect the talent market to get even more challenging.2
Common Obstacles
76% of executives expect workforce planning to become a top strategic priority for their organization.2
But…
30% of small businesses do not have a formal HR function.3
Small business leaders are often left at a disadvantage for hiring and retaining the best talent, and they face even more difficulty due to a lack of support from HR.
Small enterprises must solve the strategic workforce planning problem, but they cannot invest the same time or resources that large enterprises have at their disposal.
Info-Tech's Approach
A modular, lightweight approach to workforce planning and talent management, tailored to small enterprises
Clear activities that guide your team to decisive action
Founded on your IT strategy, ensuring you have not just good people, but the right people
Concise yet comprehensive, covering the entire workforce lifecycle from competency planning to development to succession planning and reskilling
Info-Tech Insight
Every resource counts. When one hire represents 10% of your workforce, it is essential to get it right.
1CNBC & SurveyMonkey. 2ADP. 3Clutch.
Labor quality is small enterprise's biggest challenge
The key to solving it is strategic workforce planning
Strategic workforce planning (SWP) is a systematic process designed to identify and address gaps in today's workforce, including pinpointing the human capital needs of the future.
Linking workforce planning with strategic planning ensures that you have the right people in the right positions, in the right places, at the right time, with the knowledge, skills, and attributes to deliver on strategic business goals.
SWP helps you understand the makeup of your current workforce and how well prepared it is or isn't (as the case may be) to meet future IT requirements. By identifying capability gaps early, CIOs can prepare to train or develop current staff and minimize the need for severance payouts and hiring costs, while providing clear career paths to retain high performers.
|
52% |
of small business owners agree that labor quality is their most important problem.1 |
|---|---|
|
30% |
30% of small businesses have no formal HR function.2 |
|
76% |
of senior leaders expect workforce planning to become the top strategic challenge for their organization.3 |
1CNBC & SurveyMonkey. 2Clutch. 3ADP.
Workforce planning matters more for small enterprises
You know that staffing mistakes can cost your department dearly. But did you know the costs are greater for small enterprises?
The price of losing an individual goes beyond the cost of hiring a replacement, which can range from 0.5 to 2 times that employee's salary (Gallup, 2019). Additional costs include loss of productivity, business knowledge, and team morale.
This is a major challenge for large organizations, but the threat is even greater for small enterprises, where a single individual accounts for a large proportion of IT's productivity. Losing one of a team of 10 means 10% of your total output. If that individual was solely responsible for a critical function, your department now faces a significant gap in its capabilities. And the effect on morale is much greater when everyone is on the same close-knit team.
And the threat continues when the staffing error causes you not to lose a valuable employee, but to hire the wrong one instead. When a single individual makes up a large percentage of your workforce, as happens on small teams, the effects of talent management errors are magnified.
Info-Tech Insight
One bad hire on a team of 100 is a problem. One bad hire on a team of 10 is a disaster.
Blueprint pre-step: Determine your starting point
People and Resource management is essential for any organization. But depending on your needs, you may want to start at different stages of the process. Use this slide as a quick reference for how the activities in this blueprint fit together, how they relate to other workforce management resources, and the best starting point for you.
Your IT strategy is an essential input to your workforce plan. It defines your destination, while your workforce is the vessel that carries you there. Ensure you have at least an informal strategy for your department before making major workforce changes, or review Info-Tech's guidance on IT strategy.
This blueprint covers the parts of workforce management that occur to some extent in every organization:
- Workforce planning
- Knowledge transfer
- Development planning
You may additionally want to seek guidance on contract and vendor management, if you outsource some part of your workload outside your core IT staff.
Track metrics
Consider these example metrics for tracking people and resource management success
| Project Outcome | Metric | Baseline | Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reduced training costs | Average cost of training (including facilitation, materials, facilities, equipment, etc.) per IT employee | ||
| Reduced number of overtime hours worked | Average hours billed at overtime rate per IT employee | ||
| Reduced length of hiring period | Average number of days between job ad posting and new hire start date | ||
| Reduced number of project cancellations due to lack of capacity | Total of number of projects cancelled per year | ||
| Increased number of projects completed per year (project throughput) | Total number of project completions per year | ||
| Greater net recruitment rate | Number of new recruits/Number of terminations and departures | ||
| Reduced turnover and replacement costs | Total costs associated with replacing an employee, including position coverage cost, training costs, and productivity loss | ||
| Reduced voluntary turnover rate | Number of voluntary departures/Total number of employees | ||
| Reduced productivity loss following a departure or termination | Team or role performance metrics (varies by role) vs. one year ago |
Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs
DIY Toolkit
“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”
Guided Implementation
“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”
Workshop
“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”
Consulting
“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”
Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst
Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 9 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation 1: Workforce Planning
- Call 1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.
- Call 2: Assess current workforce needs.
- Call 3: Explore internal successor readiness.
- Call 4: Determine skill sourcing route.
- Call 5: Set priority development competencies.
Guided Implementation 2: Knowledge Transfer
- Call 1: Identify knowledge to be transferred.
- Call 2: Create a knowledge transfer plan.
Guided Implementation 3: Development Planning
- Call 1: Draft development goals and select activities.
- Call 2: Build managers’ coaching & feedback skills.
Help Managers Inform, Interact, and Involve on the Way to Team Engagement
Implement an IT Employee Development Plan
Optimize the Mentoring Program to Build a High-Performing Learning Organization
Start Making Data-Driven People Decisions
Reimagine Learning in the Face of Crisis
IT Diversity & Inclusion Tactics
Leading Through Uncertainty Workshop Overview
Leadership Workshop Overview
The Small Enterprise Guide to People and Resource Management
Build a Better Manager
(Re)Calibrate Your IT Workforce for AI
Grow Your Own Cybersecurity Team
