With the holiday season in full swing, many companies find themselves unprepared and understaffed. In this article, we will discuss why long-term staff shortages are harmful to your business and share tips on how to avoid them.
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where nearly half your team is on annual leave and you’re struggling to manage without them? You’re not alone. Certain times of the year tend to be more popular for people to take time off, leaving companies and their remaining staff in a difficult position. However, more often than not, it’s not the employee’s fault. In fact, the responsibility for being understaffed and its consequences lies with the employer. Who was responsible for approving their leave request in the first place?
The common theme is that most holiday requests will come in at different times, even if they’re for the same period. It’s easy to double-book and end up with fewer staff than expected. In this article, we will discuss the long-term impacts this can have and how to reduce the risk of being short-staffed.
What is the Root Cause of Understaffing?
Staff shortages often happen when an employer approves too many holiday leave requests at the same time. If combined with unexpected issues like sick leave or no-shows, it can seriously disrupt your company. The solution to this problem is also straightforward - centralising staff availability before approving their time off.
Other common causes include taking on higher workloads than usual, poor management that leads to high turnover, and standards that are difficult to meet. The solution to these issues lies in the company’s values or, rather, in changing your approach to them.
The Impact of Being Understaffed
Being short on staff is a problem many businesses face, and it’s therefore not taken as seriously as it should be. However, it is more harmful to companies than it is often recognised. Since many resources already discuss its overall impact, we will focus only on the biggest issues it causes.
Lower Team Morale
Employee wellbeing remains one of the most talked-about topics in the post-pandemic era. While being understaffed is clearly inconvenient for you as an employer, its impact on your team is often overlooked. Expecting the same results and meeting deadlines with a reduced workforce means the staff you do have will need to work harder. While this might be acceptable occasionally, if it becomes a frequent or prolonged issue, it will negatively affect your team’s overall morale.
First of all, overworking is the quickest route to burnout, which itself causes many problems. Secondly, as humans, we are wired to become more irritable when tired or subjected to prolonged stress. This means your relationship with your employees is likely to suffer as they grow resentful, not to mention potential internal conflicts that will reduce alignment and cooperation. In other words, being short-staffed is a lose-lose situation for everyone in the company. While it’s bound to happen occasionally, it should be avoided whenever possible.
Impact on Services Provided
This correlates with lower team morale, as exhausted and grumpy workers are unlikely to sustain high performance. Although the overall output might seem unaffected initially, like in the previous case, cracks will soon start to show if the problem continues. Previously, you were risking internal issues; now, it poses a direct threat to your well-being and reputation as a business.
Naturally, when your clients pay for your services, they expect to get value for their money. Your personal circumstances, very likely, don’t concern them and should therefore not be used as an excuse. It is a good idea to give them a warning that you are understaffed and minor delays might happen, but don’t mistake this for permission to underperform. The experience and results you deliver form the foundation of your company’s reputation and trustworthiness—unfavourable internal situations do not contribute to it. It is therefore in your best interests to ensure nothing compromises the quality of the services you provide, including being short-staffed.
Tools to Help
There are tools available that can help you better understand your team’s availability. Additionally, they can assist you in allocating your workforce more effectively and planning ahead for unforeseen circumstances.
Holiday Management System
Every business has made this mistake at least once - allowing too many team members to take leave simultaneously. It can be difficult to avoid, especially when leave requests come at different times but are for a similar period. Double-booking is easier than we think, particularly when there is no centralised view of your team’s overall availability and there are multiple approvers. However, this is an easily solvable problem. All you need is a holiday management system. They are simple, affordable, and packed with benefits.
The system simplifies the process of requesting and reviewing leave applications by keeping everything in a single place, instead of relying on emails that can get lost or forgotten. Furthermore, if the holiday is approved, it immediately appears on the calendar. Besides helping to prevent understaffing, a holiday management system also handles tasks such as calculating holiday accruals and managing carry-overs. While these tasks are usually straightforward, they can still consume a considerable amount of your time.
Shift Scheduling Software
Another useful tool is a shift scheduler. Sometimes, it comes as part of the holiday management system or as a co-joined module of a larger solution. This tool also displays the availability of your team members in greater detail, specifically showing how many hours they have worked within the specified period. This information helps determine how much additional work time can be allocated to them when creating a rota.
Most shift scheduling solutions require minimal involvement. Specifically, you need only input your team’s time rules. After that, the system will automatically generate their rotas, with or without your approval. Whether integrated or part of a holiday system, a shift scheduler will automatically account for employees who are unavailable and either exclude or replace them in the rota with the next available worker.
Navigating the Holiday Season
The holiday season is especially tricky because this is when most of your staff want time off. It requires advance preparations from both sides. As an employer, you need to focus on two key aspects.
Awareness and Visibility
As you might have gathered from reading the rest of this article, there are two key factors in ensuring you minimise the risk of being short-staffed. One is having visibility over your team's overall availability. This helps you ensure you don’t allow multiple employees to take time off at the same time, leaving the rest of your team struggling. It also enables you to plan ahead for periods when you know your workforce will be less available.
The second point is awareness. Specifically, recognising that even with your best efforts and the right tools, being understaffed still occurs. Emergencies, no-shows, and other unforeseen scenarios can suddenly reduce your workforce. Being conscious of this possibility allows you to develop an action plan for when it happens. Tools like a shift scheduler can help manage these crises more easily. It’s important to remember that such situations are usually rare and short-term. Otherwise, it indicates an issue that needs addressing and resolution.
Summary
Being understaffed is a situation every company faces from time to time, especially during the holiday season. While it’s inevitable on occasion, it’s in your best interest to minimise its frequency and duration. Primarily because it strains your remaining staff, who are under pressure to maintain the same level of performance. This can lead to dissatisfaction, resentment, and misalignment within the team, which in turn affects the quality of services you provide. Overall, it’s detrimental in many ways.
Occasional understaffing may occur due to unforeseen circumstances such as emergencies - recognise this and have a plan in place for such situations. However, often you can anticipate when your workforce will be limited and prepare accordingly. Tools like a holiday management system provide centralised visibility, and shift scheduling software is your go-to for delegating available resources. To achieve the best results, we recommend using both together.
Are you ready to face this holiday season without any dips in productivity? We’re here to help!