February 2021

You are aware that your business has chronic periods of being short staffed. Your employees are often rushed to assist customers at hand during peak hours, and customers frequently turn impatient due to long wait times or poor service. Now what? How do you go about fixing understaffing issues in a systematic, effective way without increasing the number of employees?

Often, understaffing is not a conscious decision by management but is instead caused by an inability to predict the peaks and valleys of demand. Staffing to the average customer flow does not account for sporadic peaks in demand. Stores that have fluctuating rush periods may inadvertently become understaffed during these sudden demand peaks.