The work content of the existing workforce needs to be ascertained. The work content has to be categorized as Daily/Weekly/Fortnightly/Monthly/Bimonthly/Quarterly/Half-yearly and Annual activities. For example, in Sales, one needs to:
- **Daily:** Number of sales calls the person has to make, Number of quotations to be generated through these sales calls, etc.
- **Weekly:** Generating weekly sales report, Monitoring payment collections, Feasibility study of new quotations received.
- **Fortnightly:** Following up with production on the status of orders.
- **Monthly:** Review of business generated during the month against targets set, Aging analysis of collections, Status of quotes sent against quotes received.
- **Bimonthly/Quarterly:** Planning to fulfill the gaps during the previous months in terms of sales generation, collections.
- **Half-yearly:** Orders won/lost statement and reasons for gaining or losing an order, Gap analysis and planning corrective and preventive action.
- **Annual:** Generating a business plan for the next year and setting goals for the sales force, Market analysis and segmentation to focus on areas that need to be addressed in the forthcoming year.
Once this exercise is done, you will tentatively arrive at the time required to perform these activities. Based on the time duration, you can arrive at the required workforce. In some instances, there may be employees in other departments who have less work. In such a case, you need to redeploy them and balance their workload so that employees in all departments are optimally utilized.
Regards,
M.V. Kannan