- Why one absence stalls a small team
- Sorting work into cover, delay or pause
- What to check before bringing in outside help
- Three things to prepare in normal times
The short answer
When someone resigns or goes on leave without warning, starting a recruitment drive may not close the gap before the work stalls. In the first few days, list the work that cannot stop and decide, item by item, whether someone covers it, it waits, or it pauses. Then, in normal times, keep a list of who does what and name a backup person, so the next vacancy causes less disruption.
Why one absence can stall a whole team
In a small team, one person usually holds several roles. On a factory floor, the person who handles line changeovers may also place material orders and answer customers' questions about delivery dates. When they leave, three jobs stop at once.
Often nobody has a list of what that person was carrying. Colleagues see the daily work, but a monthly order or a filing that comes round a few times a year only surfaces when the deadline arrives. The impact of a vacancy tends to show up not on the day the person leaves, but on the dates of the deadlines they held.
First, find the work that cannot stop
Once you know about the vacancy, write down everything the person handled and lay it out in a table like this.
| Task | Next deadline | If it stops | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Material orders | Every Monday | Next week's line stops | Someone covers |
| Delivery enquiries | Any time | Customers wait for answers | One named contact |
| Equipment inspection log | Month end | Gaps in the record | Assign and continue |
| Improvement suggestions | None | Little short-term effect | Pause |
The key is to agree up front that pausing and delaying are allowed. If the remaining staff try to keep everything going, low-priority work eats their time and the truly critical work slips. For anything you pause, tell the people affected how long it will be paused.
If the person is resigning, ask them to help fill in the table while they are still there. If they are on leave, not adding to their burden comes first: keep contact to the minimum and fill in what you can from shared files and work records.
Do not handle a handover by asking for the person's password and sharing it. The normal approach is for an administrator to reassign access.
Do not try to absorb it all internally
If the gap is filled only with the remaining staff's overtime, they tire, and that leads to the next vacancy. Overtime also has legal limits (explained in our column on busy-season staffing).
Internal options include temporary help from other departments, agreeing with customers to move some deadlines, and dropping manual tallies in favour of records you already keep. Beyond that, consider bringing in outside help for what is still short. Not assuming "we'll manage somehow" usually gets the work back on track sooner.
When you borrow help, do not hand everything over at once. If you ask someone from another department to take over material orders, start with three things: the supplier, the usual order quantities, and who approves. Passing on the critical tasks one at a time makes them easier to take on.
What to check before bringing in outside help
Ways to bring in outside help include worker dispatch (haken) and contracting (ukeoi). Under dispatch, a person employed by a staffing agency works under your company's direction. If you use dispatch, confirm that the agency holds a licence for worker dispatch business.
Under contracting, the contractor directs its own workers and manages their employment. The ordering company may not give those workers instructions directly. Even if the contract says contracting, if in practice it works the same way as dispatch, it is disguised contracting (gisou ukeoi) and breaches the Worker Dispatch Act.
Whichever route you take, what matters is being able to say which work, to what extent, and until when. The rows marked "Someone covers" in the table above are already a draft of that scope.
What to prepare before a vacancy happens
There are three main things to prepare in normal times.
- A task list: for each person, one line per task with frequency, next deadline and where the procedure is kept
- A backup person: for every task that cannot stop, write a second name, and have that person actually do it once a year
- Deadlines out of personal notebooks: put monthly and occasional deadlines on a shared calendar so both the owner and the backup are notified
For how to write the procedures themselves, see Five First Steps Away From "Only She Knows How". Attendance records that show who works how much, and when, also help you spot work collecting around one person. Someone whose overtime clearly stands out is also the person whose absence would hit hardest.
Summary
The impact of a sudden vacancy lands on the deadlines the person held. In the first few days, list the work that cannot stop, decide what is covered, delayed or paused, and avoid filling the gap with the remaining staff's overtime alone. When bringing in outside help, understand how the arrangements differ and check that the provider is licensed. A task list, a backup person and shared deadlines, set up in normal times, are the preparation for the next vacancy.
APOUL's consultations also cover breaking down work and tidying attendance and handover records (open from 1 November 2026). For questions that need a labour-law judgement, please consult a licensed labour and social security attorney (sharoushi).
APOUL Calendar
APOUL KINTAI