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Understaffed and overworked employees are usually a strong sign of poor management. However, this isn’t always the case, at least for temporary periods. After all, you can’t always account for the fact that half of your team becomes sick with the flu or Covid, or that seasonal demand has suddenly skyrocketed out of nowhere if previous sale patterns couldn’t have predicted it.

In these moments, you may realize you need to expand or alternate your working strategy. However, supporting an overworked and understaffed team should be the main priority when that does come around. That’s because while most employees can understand the “all hands on deck” requirement from time to time, unless they’re being paid extra for it (and perhaps even then), no one wants to make this a long-term habit. Work/life balance is important to most, after all.

In this post, we’ll discuss what to do should such a difficulty greet your team:

Temping & Outsourcing Help

Now and again you just need more people to assist, and in such instances, a temping agency can provide you with qualified people who can jump right into the work, so there’s no need to worry about finding and screening candidates yourself. This works well for office duties, retail, and hospitality in some instances too.

Outsourcing some tasks or projects to a third party is also an option. For example, if your marketing team is swamped with a big campaign, an outsourced social media manager can keep your content schedule going and managed for a few weeks. Tapping into these resources when you’re stuck can help your regular employees suffer less of a chance of burning out completely, and let’s you scale temporarily.

Pre-Prepare Hands-Off Tools

Having tools ready that can handle some tasks on their own is a good preparation to make, such as chatbots for customer service inquiries, which can answer common questions and free up your staff. Automated email sequences are another example, for duties like customer updates or order confirmations. 

A ringless voicemail service is an excellent tool as well, as it sends a voice message directly to a client’s inbox without their phone ever ringing. That’s perfect for sending out important announcements or reminders without tying up your phone lines or your employees’ time, which is so valuable when you’re understaffed.

Have A Clear Task Assignment System In Place

Sometimes, understaffed teams are helped if they just have a clear idea of what to do next, as opposed to flapping around trying to cover overlapping duties. Using a project management tool that provides a clear layout of what needs to be done, who is responsible for it, and by when can allow those who are working flat out to tick off each measure with care.

If you can avoid confusion and ensure everyone knows their priorities, you’ve won half the battle here. Using a visual workflow can also help, because it gives the team a clear overview of the workload, so they can see what’s coming up and what’s already been handled. Make sure to brief them repeatedly and give them an overview of what to expect, as it will help a great deal.

With this advice, you’ll be certain to support your overworked and understaffed team.