When a team says it’s short-staffed, HR is often tasked with fixing the problem. However, before jumping into a hiring process, it’s essential to assess whether hiring would even fix the problems that employees are surfacing.
Jennifer Gore, founder of Evergreen Business Coaching, suggests that management and HR need to understand what a “comfortable workload” means for the company. This involves knowing the capacity for each team member to do their jobs comfortably while being productive.
Gore notes that managers who may not have held the roles their direct reports have or haven’t done that job in a long time may not know these metrics. As a result, a team can become understaffed without a manager knowing it, relying on team members to report the issue.
Assessing Team Capacity
For example, a restaurant owner should know how many tables a waiter can manage. If there’s only one waiter when three are needed, it can lead to bad customer service, unhappy staff, and high turnover rates.
Gore emphasizes that managers need to understand their business’s capacity to avoid these issues. This involves knowing the limits of each team member and the team as a whole.
Diagnosing the Root Cause
Chris Relth, founder and CEO of Artemis, suggests that HR should diagnose the root cause of the short staffing complaint. It may not be a staffing problem, but rather an issue with leadership not delegating work correctly or inefficient processes.
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Relth recommends holding “alignment meetings” where team members are asked about their workload, skills, and time management. This helps HR understand how the team is working and identify areas for improvement.
By analyzing the team’s workflow, HR can see who is exceeding expectations and duplicate that success. Relth notes that hiring strategies can also look longer term, considering whether a hire is needed immediately or in the future.
Hiring at the Right Time
Gore advises that throwing another person into the mix isn’t necessarily going to solve a capacity gap. Sometimes, hiring someone can make a manager’s life more difficult, as they have to manage an additional person.
Gore suggests that timed studies can be helpful in justifying or nixing a hire request. By analyzing the cost of hiring someone to take on specific tasks, HR can determine whether it’s a worthwhile investment.
HR teams can also stem off urgent hire requests by maintaining a full talent pipeline for future positions. Gore emphasizes the importance of having a recruiting mentality, rather than waiting until the company is desperate to hire someone.
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