What to do when a team says it’s short-staffed

Hiring is not always the answer — and it could actually invite more trouble if underlying causes of workload strain aren’t addressed, experts said. It’s a common complaint that HR is tasked to fix: “We’re short staffed.” But before a company jumps into a hiring process that can be costly and time consuming — especially if, in a rush, it hires someone unfit for the job — first it needs to ask whether hiring would even fix the problems that its employees are surfacing. Here’s what HR managers can do to assess those problems and give employees the help they need. To start, management and HR needs to know what the capacity for each team member is, so they can do their jobs comfortably while also being productive. That might sound basic, but it’s a step often skipped, said Jennifer Gore, founder of Evergreen Business Coaching. That’s especially true for managers who may not have ever held the roles their direct reports have or haven’t done that job in a long time. If no one knows those metrics, a team can become understaffed without a manager knowing it, “and you’re relying on your team telling you, which is not a good look,” she said. For example, an owner of a restaurant should know how many tables a waiter can manage. “If you only have one waiter and you really need three, you’re going to have bad customer service, you’re going to have an unhappy waitress, you’re going to have people quitting,” she said. The same is true for any business, and managers have “a lack of knowledge about their business if you don’t know capacity.” HR should diagnose the root cause of the short staffing complaint, said Chris Relth, founder and CEO of Artemis. It might not really be a staffing problem, but that leadership is not delegating work correctly, or the processes the team uses are just inefficient.

Before starting a job candidate search, HR should first try to see what’s happening within the team, with each person on that team. Companies can hold “alignment meetings,” he said, where team members are asked where they’re spending most of their time, what do they do and what skill sets they have. This process can help HR understand how the team is working, see who is exceeding expectations and duplicate that. “If someone’s at 80% and someone’s at 140%, how do we get the 80% person to 100%?” he said. Hiring strategies can also look longer term, he added. “Do we need to hire to fill the spot now, or do we need to hire to fill the spot two years from now and grow to that role?” Team members can also do time studies, said Gore, and keep track of what they do in 30 minute increments to see where they’re spending their time and on what. “Are you spending a lot of time doing stuff we could hire somebody [else] to do?” Gore said. Throwing another person into the mix isn’t necessarily going to solve a capacity gap. “You can get into a position where everyone’s always going to want more help just because someone says they need more help,” said Gore. Sometimes hiring someone could make a manager’s life even more difficult because now they have one more person to manage. Hiring someone an assistant also may not make them more productive; it just lets them “relax a little” instead, Gore said.

That’s where those timed studies can be helpful in justifying or nixing a hire request. “Let’s say I’m paying you $50 an hour,” Gore said. “If I hire someone I could pay $25 an hour, it makes sense to take those items off your plate.” HR teams can also stem off these seemingly urgent requests by making sure their talent pipeline is full for when new positions are needed. “Most people are waiting until they’re desperate to hire someone, and you should always have a recruiting mentality,” she said. Because “if you’re hiring in desperation, where you’re fully over capacity, now there’s a lot of pressure on a business.” HR teams can also improve communication with the C-suite and managers to ensure they are aware of talent requests or potential future position openings. “You should always have a pulse on what seats are open and open and what seats are a flight risk,” she said. Two Connecticut laws requiring that require employers to provide pay ranges take effect this week. The officer also said she was forbidden to speak publicly about equity. Two Connecticut laws requiring that require employers to provide pay ranges take effect this week. The officer also said she was forbidden to speak publicly about equity.

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