Managing holiday staff shortages

Antony Paul at Quadient explores the role of automation in business success

 

In the UK, there is an estimated 5.6 million small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), contributing to job creation and economic growth. For these SMBs, consistent growth is crucial to survival and competitiveness, especially when compared to larger businesses that have greater resources to weather uncertainty.

 

However, maintaining this momentum can be challenging during holiday seasons, like Easter and summer, when staff shortages often coincide with increased customer demand or the push to meet targets. This can add strain to operations as employees take time off and temporary help becomes harder to secure.

 

So, how can SMBs keep operations running smoothly when understaffed over the holidays, especially when processes need to continue throughout the seasons?

 

The holiday season hurdles

During holiday periods, SMBs face a unique set of challenges that can strain their operations. First, increased competition from larger businesses offering aggressive discounts can put pressure on small companies to match prices, often at the cost of their profit margins.

 

Simultaneously, the increase in customer demand that discounts create can lead to heightened expectations for swift and efficient service. With smaller teams and limited resources, SMBs often find it challenging to keep pace. This can put their reputation at risk and damage customer loyalty.

 

As SMBs face heightened competition and increased demand, understaffing adds further strain. With many employees taking time off around seasonal holidays, businesses are left with fewer staff during what can very busy periods. This often results in longer hours and added responsibilities for remaining staff. In fact, regardless of the season, labour shortages are named to be the second biggest concern of SMBs.

 

Each of these factors create a high-pressure environment for SMBs, where operational strain meets financial stress. Pressures have reached new heights as UK businesses are now three times more likely to enter voluntary liquidation than ever before. Altogether, these seasonal challenges make it difficult for SMBs to maintain stability and growth during a period that, while full of opportunity, can also test the resilience of their operations.

 

Holiday spirit, automated

To navigate the holiday seasons and keep SMBs thriving through the rush, new ways to manage understaffing are essential. Key to this is using technology to do more with less.

 

SMBs that adopt document automation to streamline tasks will significantly benefit when less support is available. For example, automating personalised communications can speed up the process of sending both digital and physical documents to customers. By doing so, businesses can effectively wrap up tasks quicker while easing the burden of repetitive manual work for employees.

 

Automation also enables businesses to react quicker and speed up time to market. This is especially important in creating promotional offers or reacting to market changes. All this is crucial when resources are stretched thinly during the major holiday periods.

 

Additionally, using smartphone document capture solutions will offer employees more convenience and speed. This allows staff to process documents on the go, reducing processing times to enhance customer service and the overall customer journey. Such tools increase efficiency by supporting remote and hybrid workflows, which provide employees with greater flexibility – crucial when the business as a whole is short-staffed.

 

Document automation can also help minimise the risk of human error, which tends to increase when staff are overloaded with tasks and working against tight deadlines. By ensuring digital documents are delivered on time through customers’ preferred channels, SMBs can keep pace with larger competitors and maintain efficiency during busy seasons.

 

Making the holidays bright for SMBs

By using document automation and digitalising internal processes, SMBs can unwrap the gift of efficiency. With these tools, SMBs can help transform workplaces into well-oiled machines that keep the holiday spirit alive. Ultimately, this will help turn holiday seasons into times of growth and opportunity.

 

Businesses can count on automation to streamline processes, reduce manual workloads, and elevate customer service during some of the busiest times of the year. For many SMBs, document automation can feel like a miracle by helping to manage surges in demand with fewer hands-on deck.

 

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Antony Paul is Global Product Head at Quadient

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and PonyWang