Managing growth

Case 2: HR Planning
At Medical Systems, Inc., sales have been on the upswing. In the past, an addition of 15-20 new stores a year was a good year. This last year saw an addition of 25 new customers, and it looks like the next couple of years could be just as good. The owners are scared that they will not have enough employees to manage the additional growth.
They would like to sit down with you and discuss their options for handling the increased growth from an HR perspective.

Facts you need:
- You have 25 employees
- Productivity appears to be about 60% per employee; the owners think that that is the best they can get
- You have five functional groups (counting HR), and each functional group has at least one outstanding employee, while others are good to average.
- Organization of the 'departments' is not very organized; there may be some efficiency to gain internally before hiring
- There are no department managers; the owners (who are also the programmers)manage everything right now
- 25 customers equates to approximately 75-125 additional support calls per month.
- Support representatives can handle about 200 calls per month.

Assignment
Based on the information provided, what would you tell the owners with regards to how to best handle the additional growth? Write a statement describing how you would recommend to strategically use the current employee base, if and why you would add additional staff, and any other recommendations you would make for the strategic use of the companies human resources.