The single most costly expense item for a business is people. Often times a business will fail to deal with employees who are not productive, processes that are inefficient or some other time and money wasting problem. Because these problems exist it often takes more people to process the work so more people are hired. This is simply surrounding problems with more people. And this is very expensive. When employees are not productive or processes are not efficient morale, customer service and the bottom line suffer. Deal expediently with employees who aren't performing at acceptable levels. Attempt to coach them to higher levels of performance and productivity. If they simply can't get to where they need to be, consider discharging them. Refine processes to make them as efficient as possible. The last thing a business needs is more employees than required. Too many employees drastically impacts the bottom line.