Expanding production capacity typically focuses on upfront investments in facilities, equipment, and recruitment; however, that’s not always wise in a volatile economic environment.  Even in a favorable economy, months pass between incurring costs and realizing benefits, and with changing market conditions that can be even longer.  Many businesses are unwilling to take the risk to grow, or simply can’t afford that level of capital investment. 

Making sure your team has enough hands on deck can present challenges of all kinds. Namely, the expense involved with traditional ways of hiring. Traditionally, a recruiter could spend a couple of weeks hiring for just one position. All things considered (things being salary, onboarding costs, and the plan ahead), hiring often comes with a hefty fee attached.

Have you ever wondered where all the overhead in your business is coming from? Transaction costs might be to blame, but luckily there are things you can do to minimize these. Lean methodology holds the keys to reducing the most readily addressable issues affecting transaction costs in your business.

So you want to grow your business, but you aren’t sure you can because of cash flow constraints. This problem plagues many companies, so you aren’t alone. This is an issue that US manufacturing as a whole needs to solve to maintain competitiveness.

You’ve been there before: volume has suddenly dropped off a cliff, after months of hiring staff to meet a big surge. You’re left with more employees than you have the work for, and it’s eating a hole in your margins. The situation might be bad enough that you have to let people go.

We’ve talked to hundreds of operations leaders, so we know you probably think that on-demand labor will take a long time to set up and test. If you’ve worked with traditional staffing agencies, you’ve probably spent hours just getting started. And that time doesn’t even reflect the whole process happening behind the scenes that you didn’t have control over.

You’ve heard the term labor pool and have an idea of what it is, but now you are likely wondering: what level of commitment is needed, and is it worth it for me and my business?

Operations leaders across the country are wrestling with the issue of balancing their daily execution with finding time to drive operational improvements. The truth is that creating a labor pool is something we’ve seen plenty of clients utilize to solve this problem. The other truth is that creating a labor pool is a bonafide change to the way that most businesses have viewed their labor force, which is understandably a reason to be skeptical.

At Veryable, we operate an on-demand labor platform to solve the need for efficiently responding to changes in customer demand. We understand that this isn’t for everyone, but by the end of this blog you will be better equipped to make that determination for your business.

The big question is: should building a labor pool be an operational improvement priority?

It is difficult to understand how much money different forms of hiring will truly cost your company. What most people really want to know is whether you should handle it all yourself, or pay someone to manage some or all of your hiring. Many even wonder if they should choose another option entirely, like staffing agencies or on-demand labor.

If you’re in manufacturing or logistics, you understand how important balancing labor costs and productivity is to meeting your goals. Pricing models for on-demand labor can be confusing, and businesses like yours need to know if this new labor model can cut costs and fuel growth. Maybe you’re asking yourself if it’s even worth looking into on-demand labor.

As a General Manager or Operations Manager of a manufacturing plant, warehouse, or logistics/supply chain company you understand the importance of human capital. You also understand that in a low unemployment economy that finding and retaining talented individuals is challenging. In addition to turnover, nonproductive time, absenteeism, overtime, etc. all make it very difficult to drive productivity improvements in a competitive environment that is evolving rapidly.

I spent the early part of my career in Corporate Finance for many recognizable names in consumer goods manufacturing, and no matter how sophisticated the financial reporting system was, figuring out what hourly labor truly cost was always quite an exercise. If answering this seemingly simple question is difficult for a large Fortune 100 company to answer, it is not surprising that many of the businesses I talk to on a weekly basis simply are not educated on the true cost of their “$10/HR” labor.