As far as I know, Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned, but we haven't trained Dolly how to use a computer. And, I'm all out of luck with being able to clone my team members. I'm writing this blog because I'm facing a challenge. My company is growing at a remarkable rate, and while I search for more permanent team members, I have to deal with the reality of limited resources. For the moment, I have to do much more with less. I've put on the creative thinking cap and come up with a list of suggestions of how to tackle this challenge:

1. Embrace Contractors: Hiring full-time employees for projects that you are unsure of the longevity of is risky business. Also, trying to find the right skill set for open project work can be an incredibly time-consuming effort. I know that posting a job recruitment ad on Craigslist and having to cull through hundreds of resumes to find the diamond in the rough is my worst nightmare (I'd rather be forced to listen to Katy Perry albums on repeat).

   Recruiting firms are my secret weapon. Sure, you're going to pay a mark up for contractors, but the time that you save from having to find the right person yourself is often made up for in the price difference. If you tell a recruiting firm your price cap, they can usually work within your limits to find a hire. TIP: Be as descriptive as possible when discussing your needs with a recruiter. Make sure to be prepared with examples of work you like to help the recruiter hone in on your needs to shorten the review cycle.

2. Employee Conversations: This is the era of the generalist. Keep the conversation open with your employees to find out what areas they would like to grow in and give them more responsibility. Most (happy - see #3 below) employees will be willing to take on more work if they feel like their skill set or their sense of purpose is expanding and that they are getting recognized for their efforts.

   Also, make sure to document your employees' skill sets so you can quickly identify who you can go to if you need specific work done. At Bluewolf, we built a "Skills Matrix" in our Salesforce CRM that tracks the specialties of our employees. If a question or project comes up around video editing, I can quickly check our CRM and find out who can assist. Believe it or not, many of your employees have skills or passions that you don't know about. Make sure to tap into this by having candid conversations and keeping easily navigable documentation.

3. Keep Employees Engaged:  Engaged employees are happy employees, and happy employees = higher productivity. Making an employee feel like their voice is heard and that they have an impact on an organization is invaluable. This feeling of empowerment is necessary to keep an employee working hard for the success of the company. In a study of professional service firms, the Hay Group found that offices with engaged employees were up to 43% more productive. At Bluewolf, we have a flat hierarchy and everyone in the organization can share ideas about ways to change the company, grow the business, etc. Every person here matters (cheesy, but true).

   How do you keep employees engaged? In a nutshell, make sure they understand your company's culture and values. Make sure they have regular meetings with their supervisors (I suggest weekly). Make sure they understand their growth path. Make sure they know that their voice is heard. And, finally, make sure they are rewarded for good behavior.

4. Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize: It's essential that members of a team have aligned priorities in order to be efficient. I suggest printing out a list of the team's monthly goals and posting in a prominent place so employees can track towards the goals. Make goals realistic and achievable within the monthly time frame (let's completely relaunch our website in the next month = fail).

   In fast-changing industries like technology, priorities often shift. Weekly meetings with team members are crucial to review individual's priorities. Create a document for each employee that details monthly objectives. Review this document during weekly meetings and shift line items as priorities change. Without regular checkpoints, your employees may be spinning their wheels on projects that are no longer a top priority. TIP: Using a cloud solution like Google docs is good because the priorities' docs can be shared across the team and accessed from anywhere.

5. Knowledge: Make it easy for your employees to communicate amongst themselves to share tips and tricks, ask questions that help with job tasks, pass along details from training seminars, share relevant industry news stories, and talk about the latest Kardashian gossip (ok, not so much). This type of shared knowledge helps to enable your employees. At Bluewolf, we use salesforce.com's Chatter product for internal communication. I've witnessed employees facing a daunting work challenge get input from peers via Chatter - insight that would have taken hours of research time to find on the www. Make sure to constantly tap into existing company knowledge and make it easy to access!
6. Interns: Hiring interns has been a win-win in my experience. Interns are usually eager to learn and are adaptable. They can help to fill in the gaps at an organization. Many universities have work study programs for students that give credit for "real life" work experience in lieu of pay. It's a great idea to keep university internship directors in your digital Roladex.

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Related Post: An Elastic Workforce Model May Remain After The Recession, When it comes to IT, How to do More with Less