July 8, 2024 Avilla Area Chamber Team
Running a business with fewer hands than you need can feel like an uphill battle. Whether due to a sudden resignation, seasonal demand, or an expanding workload, being understaffed can stretch resources and impact morale. However, navigating this challenge with a clear approach can help you find the right candidate efficiently while keeping your current team motivated and engaged.
Although it may seem like a feat you cannot overcome, it is possible. Here’s a step-by-step guide to managing an understaffed team and identifying the ideal new hire.
Prioritize Key Responsibilities: When your business is understaffed, identify and focus on critical tasks. When you prioritize daily, weekly, and monthly responsibilities, it will help you ensure you’re meeting essential business needs, and minimizing stress on your team from being understaffed. Communicate openly with staff about priorities and acknowledge their hard work in covering extra duties.
Tip: This is a great time to look over your team’s workflows. Are there tasks that can be streamlined, temporarily scaled down, or combined? Working to make your processes more efficient is essential to creating more time and focus for necessary workflows and procedures.
Set Clear Hiring Objectives: When you are searching for new hires, it is a great time to review what skills and experience your team truly needs. Determine if there gaps in expertise or if certain personality traits that would complement your current team are lacking. Additionally, consider your both immediate and long-term needs, which will help to ensure the new hire is a good fit now, and as your business grows.
Example: If you’re looking for a new customer service manager, consider if your company would benefit from someone with both customer relationship skills and data analysis abilities and experience. The combination of those characteristics might serve you well down the line as you develop customer insights.
Make the Job Posting Stand Out: In a competitive job market, it’s essential to craft a job description that’s both accurate and appealing. Use clear, specific language that conveys what makes your business unique and include the many benefits that set you apart as an employer. Try to create a description that attracts candidates that align with your values and goals. Read more about how to do this in our blog, “Writing a Compelling Job Description“.
Quick Tip: Instead of “must be a team player,” consider more specific behaviors, such as “able to work effectively in a collaborative environment” or “able to contribute ideas to improve processes.” This sort of clarity will attract the right fit and save time on interviews.
Engage Your Team in the Hiring Process: Your current team has invaluable insights about what’s needed in a new hire. Encourage team members to participate in the hiring process by sitting in on interviews or offering input on what skills they feel are lacking for the open position or the team overall. Of course, the final decision for the new hire is not up to them, but this will help them to feel more involved in the process and valued as a part of your business and its success.
Bonus: If you’re short on time, having team members assist with reviewing resumes or conducting initial interviews can lighten your load and provide valuable perspectives.
Streamline Interviews for Efficiency: Being understaffed often means your time is limited, so crafting an interview process that’s efficient, but comprehensive, will assist you in staying on schedule. to help you do this, pick a handful of essential questions that allow you to assess technical skills, experience, and the personality of candidates in a shorter time. This can help avoid drawn-out interviews while still selecting quality new hires.
Sample Questions to Consider: Ask candidates how they prioritize tasks in high-pressure situations or handle unexpected responsibilities. These questions can reveal how they’d manage in a fast-paced, understaffed environment, and give you insight into how responsive they are.
Consider Temporary Help to Alleviate Pressure: If finding the right long-term candidate will take time, consider bringing in a temp, a contractor, or a freelance help to manage your immediate needs. Temporary staff can cover essential tasks, which enables you the opportunity to find the right permanent team member without compromise.
Don’t Rush the Process: Don’t neglect the importance of taking the time to find the right candidate, even if your team feels stretched and are becoming a bit overworked. Hiring someone under pressure can easily lead to misalignment with company culture or skill gaps, which will mean you will be starting the hiring process all over again. So be sure that investing the time in hiring right, saves you and your time, money, and the stress of enduring future turnover.
In Summary, managing understaffing is a challenge, but with intentional planning, you can maintain productivity and team morale in tandem with identifying the best fit for your open position. Prioritizing critical tasks, involving your team, and streamlining your hiring processes will help you make a smooth transition from operating understaffed to effectively working optimally staffed. The right candidate is out there for your business – it just takes patience, clear communication, and a focused approach to find them.