It is rare to not see the required number of players in a sporting contest on the field, pitch, oval or ice. If someone gets injured or fouls out there is typically someone on the bench that will jump into the game to replace them, a sports team succession plan.
Businesses in many respects are like a sporting organisation. Good ones strive to win the Grand Final every year. Get the best players in there, coach them on how to do their jobs properly, and do what you can to achieve goals.
Many SME’s and surprisingly a number of larger organisations struggle to keep the right players in their teams. They do not, or cannot afford, to have a bench. When they are down a person, they just cannot hustle another in. There is no fallback.
Lean staff numbers with no cross-training or succession plans inevitably leads to a recruitment exercise, and let us face it, finding good people no matter what the unemployment rate is can be a challenging endeavor.
Why?
Good people have jobs, and good companies try to hang onto them. I cannot speak on behalf of the market as a whole, but I personally have found quality shortlists getting shorter.
My advice?
Where possible think and try to have a fallback plan up your sleeve.
As an example, I worked for a company that was looking for highly technical skills that required us to search nationally, pay for relocation costs and pay above average salaries due to demand. Believe you me, these people were harder to find than needles in a haystack. My fallback recommendation was to train easily back-fillable existing staff. They were keen on new technologies. It would have been a fraction of the recruitment cost. It would have saved time and won tenders. Empire building executives opted not to use this fallback. (Not surprisingly, that company is no longer trading by the way.)
The long and short of it, when there is a gap in your team, and you don’t have a bench give a bit of thought about several options. Try to have a fallback. There is nothing worse than getting to the point of having to recruit, only having one good candidate on the short list, and that candidate goes elsewhere.