The benefit to the company is not immediately monetary, no. However, you're going to be buying this new machine from long-term improvement profits (and not leve

The benefit to the company is not immediately monetary, no. However, you're going to be buying this new machine from long-term improvement profits (and not leveraging it against future profit from staff reductions), so keeping the current payroll won't hurt your bottom line, either. But you can be damn skippy that you'll retain those employees longer, reducing turn-over costs. You'll maintain redundant, deep institutional knowledge. You'll have the flexibility (unless they're unionized, and even then sometimes) that when there's a down period and you need to temporarily drop or freeze wages, you can often negotiate it. But, I don't approach work from the pure-profit perspective and I treat my reports like valuable people instead of commodities. I fully plan to continue doing so when I eventually start businesses of my own.