Understanding when it’s time to hire more staff

Whether you run a care home, catering company or a charity, understaffing can significantly impede your operations.

Spotting the signs before they start to impact can be the difference between success and struggle. Here are five early signs of understaffing that you should look out for.

Staff are overworked

If you have a skills gap or are understaffed, you might ask your employees to pick up the slack, working extra hours / shifts or giving 110%.

In the first few weeks or months, you might notice that your salaried staff are picking these up without too much push back. However, over time, this can lead to staff burnout, a lack of morale and decreased motivation.

Ensure you’re spotting the signs early before you have a staffing crisis on your hands. Take a look at your rota reports, are your staff working more shifts or longer hours vs their contracts? Speak to your workforce, what’s the mood on the ground?

You’re spending too much on agency staff

There will always be gaps in the rota due to sickness, planned leave or last-minute absence, and agency staff are a great way to fill these quickly. However, it can be all too easy to slip into the habit of regularly reverting to agencies to fill rota gaps, especially when your team is already overworked.

Mitigate this, by looking back on your rota reporting. Is there a pattern of times of the day / week when there are most gaps in your staff schedule?

High-value staff are doing low-value work

As any business grows, there’s an element of everyone chipping in to get the job done. But if you’re noticing that your high value staff are spending too much of their time doing low-value work then it could be time to hire someone better suited to the role – allowing everyone to focus on what they do best.

More seriously, it might mean that people aren’t qualified for the task they are performing. Tracking skills and compliance in your rota software is an excellent measure of ensuring that the right people are in the right place.

You’re building a new team

Perhaps you’re opening a second care home or are expanding your catering services. You need more people to help you grow.

It can be challenging managing additional teams and resources, so ensure that you’re using a rota software that can grow with you. Rotify allows you to create additional teams in minutes and with pricing from £16 per month for the whole organisation, it’ll leave you with more budget to spend on building your business.

Everything is great, but you’re struggling to grow

Things are going really well, operationally, there are no problems, staff are happy and patients or customers are content too. But you’ve got plans to grow your business, and it’s just not happening. It’s likely that everyone is working to capacity and whilst they’re not unhappy, you’re unable to reach your own goals.

Reviewing your staffing levels alongside your operational growth is a great way to ensure that you’re heading along the right trajectory and spot the need to expand your team before it negatively impacts you.