Your responsibility to your shareholders is not to maintain the highest profits/employee - it's to deliver the highest total profit per share. If you need people, and can maintain the 3/2 ratio, you should add them.
Management is legally obligated to act in the long-term best interests of the company; that is NOT the same as "deliver the highest total profit per share." For more, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_judgment_rule http://crookedtimber.org/2008/07/25/what-obligation-maximise...