The current breakdown indicates that 3Dr’s professional categories of personnel are employed across all business operations. In particular, 68% of all personnel were employed to perform either software engineering work or some type of technical specialty. 9% were employed to a sales/marketing role. 8% were labeled as Program Managers. 7% were in charge of leading the organization’s Content Creation/Management operations. Human Resources equated to 4%, and the remaining 4% represented the Executive Management staff. In total, 3DR has 118 employees with the desire to increase the total based on customer demands.

Long-term Personnel Strategy

Hypothetically speaking, 3DR’s personnel strategy for long-term business growth could look a bit similar to the graph below that shows projected growth in the Engineering/Tech professional category. Bottom-line, 3DR will need to grow by 8.3 personnel to meet customer demands, regardless of their market state (i.e. high, stable, low).

As you can see, the project personnel growth across 3DR business operations is an additional 8.3 personnel. This shows a total of 10% growth in the Engineering/Tech professional category, 2% growth in the Sales/Marketing category, and a 1% growth in the Program Manager category. The remaining categories did not get affected by 3DR’s expansion efforts as they depict 0%.

These projections reflect made up numbers used to calculate expansion efforts to create increase capacity for software engineers to meet the growing demands from customers like the U.S. Government and other private and commercial sector entities.

With future expansion initiatives in 3DR’s best interests, layoffs may not be a consideration. Instead, 3DR would benefit if they focused on building their teams based on customer demands. This lean approach would help them stay mobile and flexible to meet changing market trends influenced by customer demands.

Does 3DR need to hire?

Absolutely! It’s in 3DR’s best interest to hire up to 8 new personnel and integrate them (by %) across the Engineering/Tech (10%), Sales/Marketing (2%), and Program Managers (1%) professional categories. This growth will aid in 3DR’s long-term personnel strategy to support the growing customer demands.

Finding the right people and Keeping them happy

So, how does management discover and attract talented managers? Finding talented professionals is easier than ever in today’s social media world. With access to over billions of people around the globe, websites like LinkedIn, Indeed, and other mass-recruiting names out there offer consumers platforms-as-a-service (PaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions.

For instance, check out the ‘LinkedIn Recruiter‘ page for educational details on the tools useful features like candidate advance search, prioritization and notes organization. In terms of dealing with sub-standard personnel, 3DR can decide whether to fire them or keep them on the roster. However, based on 3DR’s decision to grow their business, it may be wise to re-evaluate all personnel in order to identify if there are any bad apples that can be released. For positions where personnel are fired (i.e. released), 3DR can back-fill those billets with better qualified personnel to maintain their projected capacity with future growth in mind.

During market periods when customer demand is up, 3DR will need to assess whether the projected growth capacity will be able to support the increased demand. Unfortunately, leaders will need to make their decisions during iterative management cycles to identify whether dynamic changes will need to be made or to continue doing business as usual.