In terms of people, we should think about two factors; capability and capacity. And we should think about this in terms of the current situation and future needs as people issues often have a long lead time to resolve. 

Capability

Capability describes the competence of the team; what they are capable of. Competence is made up of knowledge, skills and attitude.

An area manager might use a range of questions to coach managers to think about their capability needs. These could include:

• What skills and attitudes are you missing that you need to deliver the business goals today?
• What roles are required to deliver the processes you need to achieve business goals in the future?
• What skills and attitudes are needed for those roles?
• Do you have people with these skills and attitudes, or who are capable of developing them?

What will you do with team members who are not willing or able to move or develop?

Capacity

Capacity relates to the team members you have available to do the things that need doing. It is not just about numbers of people; it is the right number of the right people in the right place at the right time. It is easy to settled into a staffing routine that does not reflect profile of the business anymore.

In your role as your own area manager you should look at the reality of what is happening rather than your assumptions about what is happening or following what has happened in the past. You should look for data that can give you good management information.

What is the business profile? When do people come in for different services; to collect repeat prescriptions; for acute prescriptions; for services (such as the contraceptive); for medicine sales or general retail sales? Can you plot this activity separately for each hour for every day of the week?

What is the staffing profile? What skills do you have available at different times of day for different days of the week? How many people are available at different times?

If you have this information you can compare both profiles. Do you have the staff you need at times when you are busy doing different tasks? A good example is a pharmacy multiple whose policy was to employ two full- time roles. When they did the comparison of these two profiles it became evident that their busiest time was the middle of the day when they had the least available staff because of lunch breaks.

If you have identified changes in processes to improve efficiency, how will you plan your staffing profile to take account of this? If you decide that a non-patient facing team dispensing repeat prescriptions will improve efficiency, how will this appear in your staffing profile? You also need to consider how this plan might change at different times of the year, for example during the flu vaccination season.

Pause to reflect

Map out the normal hours worked by the team on an hour-by-hour basis. Separate out the people who can accuracy check, dispense, put away dispensary stock, work on the pharmacy counter, and work in the shop. When you look at this written down, what does it tell you?