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Demand varies widely in the office, making staffing difficult

Last updated by Jeff Hajek on December 22, 2020

One of the biggest barriers to standardization is fluctuating short-term demand. Long term changes in demand can be managed by hiring staff or by attrition, but when there is significant variation day to day or even hour to hour, it just isn’t practical to hire new people for the handful of hours when workload exceeds demand. Conversely, it is inefficient and expensive to pay people when there is not enough work.

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Problem

Demand varies widely in the office, making staffing difficult.

How this affects you

There are two types of demand that are relatively easy for managers to handle: seasonal variation in demand (like snow shovels in the winter or baseball gloves in springtime) and the gradual changes in demand that match economic upturns and downturns. Some customer demand cycles are much shorter, though. These peaks and valleys can happen inside of a month, a week, or even a single work shift (think about a coffee shop with its morning rush and afternoon lull). These cycles make it much harder for a manager to match personnel levels to demand. If he staffs the team for the busiest times, employees are idle during the slow parts of the day— not a profitable way to run a business. If he only hires enough people for the slow periods, employees get swamped during the rushes and can’t keep up.

Action to Take

Sit back and let your boss deal with this problem . . . after all, staffing is his responsibility, right? Bad idea. Proper staffing is critical to your satisfaction.

Help your boss figure out how to staff properly. The first step in accomplishing that is to help identify variations in demand. Since you do this every day and know the ins and outs of the daily workload, you are in the best position to give him an accurate picture of the trends. As you’ve read countless times already, use specific data.

Once you’ve identified the variations, the obvious next step is to come up with a way to meet the demand without creating waste. Be creative. The following list includes some possible ideas:

  • Using part-timers or temps to add capacity at peak times. This means that you will have to help identify work (the easy stuff) that your team can hand off to rookies.
  • Team up with other groups to share resources. The other group comes to help during your peak periods (their slow periods); your team supports their busy times during your slow periods. Your boss will have to negotiate this with the other team’s leader, but you will have to commit to it and work with the other team on the details.
  • Make use of leaders and support teams. Sometimes working supervisors or technical people can join teams when demand outpaces capacity. Your boss will ask you to assist in setting up the process to make it easy for helpers to come and go.
  • Shuffle the schedule around. Help your manager develop an unbalanced work schedule. Maybe a couple of people can put in extra hours a few days a week at peak times, but leave early on slow days.
  • Be flexible about breaks and lunches. If your phone rings off the hook during your “normal” lunchtime, you may be asked to eat earlier or later in your shift (in accordance with employment laws, of course!)

Why this works

The Why this Works section is only available in print copies of Whaddaya Mean I Gotta Be Lean?


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