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Although hiring talent is a crucial part of any talent strategy, managers often default to talent acquisition—hiring more people—as a reactive response to meet work demand. As I’ve tracked thousands of layoffs over the past few years through my layoff tracker, a common theme continues to emerge: many organizations cite “over-hiring” as a reason for workforce reductions, leading to costly cycles of hiring, layoffs, and rehiring. While better workforce planning and talent forecasting can help address this issue, a complementary solution should also be considered: finding ways to unlock capacity within the current workforce. One way to do this is by improving ways of working. Consider a team that spends 30% of its time in low-value meetings, navigating approval delays, or duplicating efforts. By redesigning workflows, clarifying decision rights, and eliminating redundancies, that same team can free up significant capacity. To help identify these opportunities, my editable cheat sheet includes 10 diagnostic questions, such as: Where are teams spending time on low-value or repetitive work that could be eliminated, automated, or streamlined? Where do decisions frequently stall or require excessive approval layers? With AI redefining how work gets done, now is an opportune time to reexamine how capacity can be unlocked to deliver stakeholder value and business performance.
