“We urgently need someone else.”
It’s a phrase many managing directors, founders and managers will be familiar with. The company is growing, new clients or projects are coming in, workloads across the team are increasing, and the first tasks are starting to fall through the cracks. The obvious solution seems clear: create an additional position and start recruiting as quickly as possible.
But this is exactly where it makes sense to take a step back. Because an overloaded team does not automatically mean that a company is understaffed.
Increasing staffing needs may indeed be the result of insufficient capacity. But unclear responsibilities, skills gaps, inefficient processes or an ineffective distribution of tasks can just as easily be the cause. And with AI and automation, there is another question to consider: which tasks will actually still need to be performed in the same way in the future?
Staffing needs are not simply about the number of employees a company currently has or would like to hire. What matters is the capacity and skills a company needs to handle its current and future workload.
So before companies start thinking about whom they want to hire, they should first clarify what problem an additional person is supposed to solve. The key question is therefore not simply, “How do we find new employees?” but first: Do we really need more people – and if so, what for?
Why Companies Should Take a Closer Look at Their Staffing Needs
Determining the right staffing level is particularly relevant for SMEs and start-ups. Many companies are navigating a combination of economic pressure, hard-to-fill positions, growth targets and new technological opportunities.
At the same time, AI and automation are changing the way companies organise work. Some tasks can now be completed more efficiently or partially automated, while new skills and responsibilities are emerging elsewhere. This affects not only how many people companies need, but also which skills will be required in the future.
For managing directors and founders, this increasingly raises the question of whether more work must automatically mean more headcount. Or whether actual staffing needs can only be assessed once it is clear which tasks are emerging, which skills are required to perform them and how efficiently the existing organisation operates.
Assessing Staffing Needs: Capacity, Skills or Structure?
In practice, the perceived need for additional staff often arises from day-to-day operations. A team reports that it is overloaded, a manager needs additional support, a new client comes on board, or the management team realises that it is taking on more and more operational work itself.
The desire to create an additional position is understandable in these situations. But it is initially a signal – not yet a diagnosis.
From our work with SMEs and start-ups, we are very familiar with situations like these. They are particularly common in companies that have grown quickly. The workload has increased and roles have evolved, but the original distribution of responsibilities has largely remained unchanged. Employees continue to perform tasks because they have always done them, managers step in to handle operational work, and senior management remains involved in decisions that could have been delegated elsewhere long ago.
To assess actual staffing needs, it therefore helps to make a fundamental distinction.
With a capacity problem, existing employees are being deployed effectively, processes are working, and yet there is consistently more work than the team can handle. In this case, there is a strong argument for adding capacity.
With a skills gap, there may be enough working hours available, but the team lacks a particular capability. This does not automatically mean that an additional full-time position is required. Depending on the situation, training, developing existing employees or bringing in external expertise may be more appropriate.
And finally, what appears to be a staffing issue may actually be a structural or process problem. A highly qualified specialist, for example, may spend several hours each week on administrative tasks, the same information may be maintained in multiple places, or managers may be checking work that the team could have been empowered to handle independently.
Adding another person may provide short-term relief in situations like these. But it does not solve the underlying problem.
More people do not automatically make a poor process better.
Understand the Work First – Then Decide Whether You Need a New Role
Particularly in smaller companies, staffing discussions often start with positions: “We need someone else in marketing,” “We need more support in sales,” or “We need someone for HR.”
This means a solution has already been proposed before the problem has been fully understood.
Assessing staffing needs therefore starts with understanding the work that needs to be done. What tasks are currently required? Which new tasks will arise over the next few months? How much capacity do they actually require? Which skills are needed? What needs to be handled internally, and which activities could be redistributed, simplified or automated?
Only once these questions have been answered should a role profile be developed.
This also helps prevent a common problem in growing SMEs and start-ups: searching for one person who is expected to do everything. The new colleague is supposed to handle operational tasks, think strategically, build processes, introduce a new system and ideally cover several specialist areas as well. In reality, several different needs may have been combined into a single position.
An unclear role does not become clearer simply because someone is hired to fill it.
Another situation we frequently encounter in practice is a manager requesting additional capacity while spending a significant amount of their own time on operational coordination, checks or approvals. An additional position may still make sense. But it does not automatically answer the question of whether responsibilities and decision-making processes also need to change.
Before making a new hire, companies should therefore be clear about what exactly the additional role is expected to improve. Is it intended to create additional capacity for clients, relieve managers of operational work, enable growth, ensure quality or bring a skill into the company that is currently missing?
The more specific the objective, the easier it is to assess whether a new position is genuinely the right investment.
How AI and Automation Are Changing Staffing Needs
Technology should now also be considered when analysing staffing needs. This is explicitly not about replacing as many people as possible with AI. A more useful question is: How should work be done in the future?
Administrative, repetitive or information-based tasks can, in some cases, be automated or supported by AI. This can free up capacity that employees can use for other work. At the same time, new requirements emerge: companies need different skills, have to redesign processes or take on tasks that did not previously exist.
For workforce planning, this means that existing job profiles should not simply be carried forward unchanged. When a position becomes vacant or a team requests additional capacity, it is worth asking whether the role should still look the same today as it did two or three years ago.
The company may still need an additional person – but with a different skills profile. Parts of the work may be automated, allowing the new role to focus more heavily on value-adding activities. Or existing employees may gain additional capacity through the use of suitable tools.
Technology therefore does not answer the question of staffing needs. It changes the factors companies should consider when answering it.
Additional Staffing Needs: Hiring Is Not the Only Option
Once it is clear which tasks and skills are actually required, there are essentially four options: hire, develop, optimise or bring in external support.
A new hire makes sense when additional capacity is required on an ongoing basis, there is enough work to justify the role, and the relevant expertise should be built internally for the long term.
Development may be the better answer when the main issue is a skills gap that can be addressed within the existing team. This builds new expertise while also creating development opportunities for employees.
Optimisation is needed when capacity is being consumed by unnecessary coordination, duplicated work, unclear responsibilities or inefficient processes.
Finally, companies can supplement their internal resources with external support. For SMEs and start-ups in particular, this can make sense when expertise or additional capacity is required but the volume of work does not justify a dedicated full-time position, or when it is not yet clear whether the need will exist in the long term.
None of these options is inherently better than the others. What matters is which solution best fits the actual need, the company’s current stage and its expected development.
What Does an Additional Position Cost – and What Does Not Hiring Cost?
The financial perspective naturally also plays a role when assessing staffing needs.
Looking only at gross salary is not enough. In addition to salary and employer costs, companies incur expenses for recruitment, the selection process, equipment, software, onboarding and training. Above all, a new hire initially requires time: managers conduct interviews, colleagues support the onboarding process, and knowledge has to be transferred.
But focusing only on these costs would be equally misleading. Because not hiring can also be expensive.
If existing employees are permanently overloaded, projects are not implemented, clients are kept waiting or work has to be turned down, a lack of capacity can directly restrict growth. Are important strategic tasks being neglected? Is quality declining? Are managers spending a large proportion of their time on operational matters? Or is sustained overload increasing the risk of losing good employees?
The relevant management question is therefore not, “How can we avoid creating another position?” but: What specific benefit should additional capacity deliver – and which solution is the most appropriate way to achieve that benefit?
Sometimes, the financially right answer is very clear: hire.
When Is There a Genuine Need for Additional Staff?
There is a genuine need for additional staff particularly when the increased workload is permanent, existing capacity is being used effectively and the bottleneck remains despite functioning processes. There is also a strong case for a new hire when an important skill is missing for the long term and cannot reasonably be developed within the existing team or supplemented externally.
However, the assessment should not focus exclusively on the current situation.
Workforce planning also means looking ahead: Which clients, products or projects will be added? What new tasks will they create? Which skills will we need in twelve or 24 months? And which roles are so central to the company that the relevant knowledge should be built internally for the long term?
These decisions are particularly significant for SMEs and start-ups. In a company with 30 employees, adding one position changes the organisation much more noticeably than it would in a corporation with several thousand employees. At the same time, the absence of individual key skills can significantly restrict growth.
Staffing needs should therefore be determined neither solely by a team’s current level of stress nor by a rigid headcount plan. They result from the interaction between workload, capacity, skills, processes and the company’s future development.
Good Workforce Planning Can Lead to a Clear “Yes”
For all the discussion around efficiency, automation and costs, one point should not be overlooked: the goal is not to avoid hiring wherever possible.
A growing company can optimise processes, use technology, reorganise responsibilities and develop its employees – and still need additional people.
A clear understanding of staffing needs helps companies make more deliberate decisions about when to hire, which role they actually need and what contribution that role should make to the company’s future development.
Answering these questions before recruitment begins also creates better conditions for filling the position successfully. The job description becomes more specific, expectations become more realistic, and the existing team gains clarity as well: Which tasks will the new person take on? Which responsibilities will change? What kind of relief is the new role expected to provide?
Ultimately, a new hire should do more than simply provide “an extra pair of hands”. It should make a clear contribution to how the company intends to work and grow in the future.
Conclusion: Staffing Needs Start With the Right Question
“Do we really need more people?” is not simply a question of cost, nor is it an argument against hiring. It is a question of good workforce planning.
Sometimes, the analysis shows that a process needs to change. Sometimes, a skill is missing that can be developed within the existing team. Sometimes, external support is the right solution. And sometimes, the answer is very clear: Yes, we need another person – and as soon as possible.
Companies that want to assess their staffing needs properly should therefore start by looking at the work itself: Which tasks need to be completed today and in the future? Which capacities and skills are already available? Where are unnecessary inefficiencies creating friction? What is changing as a result of technology? And which resources does the company need for its next stages of development?
For SMEs and start-ups in particular, this approach helps to use limited resources more effectively while building structures that can grow with the company.
Professional workforce planning therefore does not mean hiring as few people as possible. It means building the right resources at the right time.
And the job advertisement should not be the starting point of workforce planning.
It should be the result.
Particularly during periods of growth, it is worth looking at staffing needs in a broader context. New roles, changing responsibilities and increasing workloads are often closely linked to existing HR structures. We support SMEs and start-ups in addressing these questions and developing solutions that fit their particular stage of growth.