Understaffing is a typical workforce challenge that arises in every industry and business from time to time. Whether understaffed due to economic or industry changes, retiring staff members, pandemic or something else, it is easy for businesses to quickly fall to a skeleton crew without properly planning for staff shortage.

In order to avoid challenges like increased workloads, burnout, and potential financial losses, below are 10 tips on how to maximize productivity with an understaffed team.

10 Tips to Maximize Productivity with an Understaffed Team

1. Identify Key Staffing Roles

The best way to get started resolving a staffing issue is to determine what positions are absolutely necessary in order to keep business running successfully. Find out each team’s specific tasks and responsibilities and help them cut out unnecessary time wasters.

Identifying key staffing needs will help you as a manager focus your team towards important tasks, and exploit peak work periods. This can also help eliminate bottlenecks and areas that require less attention.  

If you can identify and establish your key staffing roles, then your business can continue to move forward while you are in the restaffing process. This can also give you the flexibility needed to reposition staff members and give more growth opportunities. For example, you can make answering the phones the responsibility of everyone in the office and cross-train the receptionist on a more lucrative position.

2. Keep Lines of Communication Open

If you are ever going to be fully transparent with your team, this is the time to do it. Get your team involved in what is going on by communicating with them about the staffing challenges. Give full discloser about the changes you are making ahead of time. Allow your team to express their concerns and offer suggestions about what should be prioritized.

Let your team work as a team! Gather feedback at team meetings on what works best when it comes to streamlining workflows to alleviate the impact of understaffing issues. Getting your team involved in the solution gives them a sense of power in the situation and will keep from burnout.

3. All Hands-On Deck Approach

When times get tough, it’s important to make sure everyone gets involved. Having an “All hands-on deck” approach means that nobody is exempt from getting their hands dirty, including managers. Just because it is not in your job description does not mean you can’t do it.

One of the biggest issues when a business is understaffed is the feeling that not everyone is carrying their weight. Many employees will harbor resentment towards other team members and managers if they can clearly see that the tasks are not evenly distributed. To avoid burnout and additional staffing issues, it is imperative that everyone must be involved in the day-to-day workload regardless whether they are considered senior or lower level workers.

4. Plan for Every Outcome

When creating a new team, it is important to incorporate a plan for possible outcomes in the future. Train your team on how to handle increased or decreased demand, short staff, customer complaints, etc. There are so many different scenarios that a team can face, regardless of the industry or business. Considering some of the likely scenarios and training your team ahead of time will ensure that there is little to no major issue if and when they happen. Everyone already knows their role and how to move forward together as a team.

5. Implement Development Initiatives

One of the best benefits a manager or business owner can give to their staff (and themselves) is offering development initiatives. This comes in the form of training programs that allow employees to reskill and/or develop new skills that can take them to the next level in their position.

Offering training programs to better develop the skillset of your employees will help your business whether there is a staff shortage or not. This allows your employees the opportunity to grow within the company and gives your business breathing room to redistribute the workforce as needed to fill different roles and responsibilities.

6. Cross-train Employees

One of the main ways to help your business during a staffing shortage and in general is by cross-training employees. Having a team that is knowledgeable in more than one area will create a workforce that can perform multiple roles. When you have employees who can take on various roles and handle inter-domain responsibilities, you can minimize the impact of understaffing on productivity.

The best way to do this is to determine the roles that have overlapping skills or responsibilities and then create structured training plans for that set of employees. Then, after training is completed, periodically assess employees’ progress in each role to ensure they acquire new skills and they have the ability to perform each role successfully.

7. Create a Culture of Teamwork

One of the best analogies I have heard when explaining a work team came from Netflix. They model their team on being a professional sports team. Everyone has their role to play but it is teamwork that ultimately builds the success of both the company and the team members. I say that to express the importance of creating a culture of teamwork. All the cross-training efforts and development initiatives will only be effective if your team works AS A TEAM. Leaders should actively participate in team efforts and encourage collaboration between team members and themselves.

Companies that encourage open and effective communication among team members promote teamwork. Cooperation is key. Recognize and reward instances of exceptional cooperation to motivate employees to support each other, distribute workloads evenly, and work harmoniously when understaffed.

8.  Prioritize Tasks

When employees are aware of the most crucial work, it gets completed first. When understaffed, organization and communication are your steppingstones to success. Prioritizing tasks and communicating the list in order of importance will ensure the most critical tasks are completed on time. Clearly define deadlines and goals for jobs and projects, as it helps set priorities.

9. Take It Easy On Overtime

Understaffing often leads to an overworked workforce. If your employees are regularly pulling long in order to meet deadlines, it will adversely affect their well-being and productivity in the long run. This will likely not help your understaffing issue, but rather make it worse.

Even though there is extra work, keep in mind that your staff members are still people. Managers should ensure that employee workloads remain not just manageable, but also reasonable. If the workload is getting to large for your team, another option is to hire some short-term help to pick up the slack and take the pressure off of your core team. Swift Staffing Solutions can help with temporary or part-time employees. It is essential to encourage your team to keep a good work-life balance, even when you are understaffed.

10. Increase Employee Perks

When your employees work extra hard to overcompensate during an understaffing period, it is only fair to show your appreciation with additional perks. If possible, you can offer flexible work hours or remote work options, a pay increase or bonus.  

Of course, not all companies have the financial ability to offer all of these options, especially when working with a skeleton crew. This doesn’t mean that you can’t still reward your staff members for their hard work and flexibility. Companies can also provide lunch on long days, surprise their staff with a special treat, give individual gifts to each employee as a thank you or even offer additional PTO days for the extra time and effort that is given.

Bonus Tip: Stay Positive

Understaffing can put pressure on employers, but maintaining a positive attitude is vital for success. Managers and supervisors should lead by example by exuding optimism to their team.

One of the best ways to keep morale positive is by keeping the lines of communication open with employees. Regularly addressing the progress being made during a period of understaffing will keep the focus forward and looking up. Make sure managers are celebrating small achievements, no matter how modest they may seem. Forward progress and positive progress, especially when everyone is working together to achieve each goal.

Check out our career advice page for more management tips and tricks.