Let’s be honest: staffing is often the bête noire of agency managers. Between staff mobilized on five missions at the same time, freelancers whose costs discreetly explode the budget, and working hours entered “when you think of it”, serenity seems out of reach.
The result? You spend more time managing scheduling conflicts than strategically steering your business. This piecemeal management is costly: projects are behind schedule, profitability is under pressure, and teams are exhausted.
And yet, there is a simple, practical way to remedy the situation: move from reactive staffing management to an anticipated, fluid process, connected to your KPIs. Gone are the unpleasant surprises, replaced by an agile, profitable and peaceful agency.
How do you get there? Here are the practical, field-proven keys to radically transforming the way you manage your teams and projects.
Staffing and time recording: the indispensable duo
If you want to control the profitability of your projects, it all starts with a simple rule: every minute counts. The problem is that all too often, time recording is neglected. As a result, you can’t keep track of the profitability of your assignments, and that ends up costing you dearly.
To regain control, the solution can be summed up in two words: rigor and regularity.
Establish data-entry hygiene: regularity and uniformity
First rule of the game: make your teams enter their time at the same rate, at the same time. Why? Because without this daily or weekly “hygiene”, it’s impossible to have a precise view of the efforts really made.
In concrete terms, set a specific time slot (at the end of the day or every Friday afternoon, for example) when everyone fills in their timesheets. It’s a small gesture that changes everything:
- You can immediately identify resource-hungry projects.
- You get reliable data to better anticipate future quotations.
- Your teams develop a discipline that makes your overall management more fluid.
Control for better management
Let’s face it: even with clear rules, oversights and mistakes still happen. The key is regular control. A project or operational manager should systematically check every week that time recording has been carried out correctly.
The aim is not to track down your employees, but to quickly identify anomalies and rectify them immediately. Regular checks also serve to remind your teams of the strategic importance of time tracking.
Leave no time in the dark
Another classic agency mistake: ignoring certain activities deemed “ancillary”, such as pre-sales or internal meetings. Yet these “hidden” activities have a direct impact on your real profitability.
Best practice? Track absolutely everything:
- Sales and pre-sales time (AVV).
- Internal and administrative meetings.
- Customer care, however informal.
You’ll soon discover that some promising customers actually consume far more resources than expected. Thanks to this exhaustive monitoring, you’ll be able to adjust your sales strategies and improve your margins.
Integrate costs directly into your staffing
If you don’t clearly link staffing to actual costs (especially your freelancers), you’re flying blind. How many times have you discovered too late that an indispensable freelancer has discreetly blown your budget?
A tip from the field: right from the initial staffing stage, systematically take into account the real cost of the resources mobilized. This will enable you to:
- Immediately assess the expected profitability of the project.
- React quickly if costs get out of hand during a mission.
- Negotiate a fair deal with your freelancers right from the start.
Simple, pragmatic, effective.
Link your staffing to real-time KPIs
Another essential best practice is to link your staffing directly to your KPIs, in real time.
The idea? To be immediately alerted if a resource is allocated to a project in deficit, or if you exceed the allocated time budgets. The sooner you detect a problem, the sooner you can correct it.
A concrete example: as soon as you assign an employee to a project, you should instantly know whether this choice improves or worsens your profitability. There’s no need to wait for the end-of-month report: you can take immediate action to limit the damage.
Staff early to win big
Finally, if you really want to optimize your staffing, do it as early as possible. Anticipation is your best ally:
- You avoid scheduling conflicts and internal tensions.
- You control your costs better, because late adjustments always cost more.
- You gain peace of mind thanks to long-term visibility.
Clearly, the earlier you start staffing, the better your agency will do.
Take action with Furious
Optimizing your staffing is not a question of complex tools, but of clear methods and operational rigor. By applying these best practices, you’ll quickly see concrete improvements in your profitability, the fluidity of your schedules and the well-being of your teams.
But to simplify your day-to-day work even further, Furious is the ideal solution. This tool is designed specifically for agencies that want fluid, anticipated staffing, directly linked to their KPIs in real time:
- Plan as soon as a quote is validated, to avoid resource conflicts.
- Easily anticipate budget slippages and adjust quickly.
- Benefit from an ultra-simple interface, so that every employee can enter his or her time effortlessly.
Ready to transform your staffing management and boost your profitability?
