Staffing your facilities management business requires a fine balance; the gap between understaffing and overstaffing can very often be narrow and carries heavy consequences for whichever way it falls.
Christmas and Black Friday can cause your staff stress and high staff turnover
One of the main problems of understaffing is the clear link between staff wellbeing and customer satisfaction. This link is a very crucial matter that will affect your business as a whole and can be a dealbreaker for your sales and profitability.
According to a survey by the UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE), it is estimated that approximately half-million individuals believe they have been exposed to occupational stressors at a level that caused them to become ill. Ultimately, stress, anxiety and other physical manifesting illnesses (which may be caused by stress) are hard to identify because they are reliant on subjective self-reported symptoms. With that in mind, it highlights that as companies must set preparation for prevention of jeopardy of the wellbeing of workers, rather than finding ‘quick-fix cures’ for an organisational disaster.
However, looking at the stress level that a business will go through in the peak season is merely looking at the problem from a partial-approach. If, as previously discussed, this busy forecast is not treated with structure for prevention of understaffing — this initial stress can further cause organisational chaos and injuries. This is especially true in your Facilities Management business, where your workers may deal with cleaning products which can pose serious health threats if not handled with caution.
Multiple physical illnesses and injuries have been ascribed to occupational stressors and making arrangements through temp workers has been proven to be a cost-effective way to handle the understaffing issue.
Positive reviews earn the UK market up to £2bn per year
As previously reported, understaffing comes with many consequences. Failure to successfully map out your peak-season staff rota effectively will put your company in a high risk of profitability and sales. Facilities management businesses, be it cleaning services, security services, or your hotel, have to be able to handle the peak with grace— meeting expectations of customers.
Failing to meet the expectations of customers will cost you business. Study shows higher transaction rate takes place when businesses have optimal level of staffing. Further, good reviews contribute to £2 billion spending in the UK per year. Customers are more likely to publicly post about their negative experiences on social media and other review pages.
According to a 2015 report run on 1,000 UK business, it was revealed that negative reviews (whether justified or simply maliciously intended), cost business up to £30,000 per year. This is also a result of new customers becoming uninterested due to lack of trust or active customers who decide to turn to competitors for a better service.
