Your operations manager is stretched. Quotes are taking longer to turn around. Customer queries sit in the inbox for two days instead of two hours. Small jobs that used to get sorted quickly now seem to take a week.
So you do what seems logical. You hire someone part-time. Three days a week. Enough to take some load off without committing to a full salary.
For the first month, it helps. Things move faster. Your ops manager has more breathing room. It feels like the right call.
But within six months, you notice something odd. The part-timer is busy. Your ops manager is still busy. And you're now more involved in the day-to-day than you were before they started.
Why this happens at a specific stage
This pattern shows up in businesses that have moved past the startup phase but haven't quite cracked how to scale operations cleanly.
You've got enough work to justify adding people, but not quite enough budget or certainty to go all-in on full-time hires. Part-time feels like the sensible middle ground.
The work itself has also changed. It's no longer just you and a core team wearing multiple hats. There are processes now. Systems. Handovers. More people need to know what's happening. More coordination is required.
This is when part-time availability starts to create friction rather than relieve it.
The common decision
Most owners respond by trying to optimise the part-timer's schedule. Maybe they move them to different days. Maybe they add another part-timer to cover the gaps. Maybe they try to batch work so it all happens on the days the part-timer is in.
Some just accept it and do the coordination themselves. They become the person who holds it all together. The one who knows what happened on Tuesday when the part-timer wasn't there. The one who picks up the thread on Thursday when something can't wait.
It works, in the sense that things get done. But it doesn't solve the underlying problem.
Why it works short term but creates new problems
Adding part-time capacity does relieve some immediate pressure. Tasks get completed. The inbox gets cleared. Your team has someone to delegate to.
But it also creates a new layer of coordination overhead that someone has to manage.
Because the part-timer isn't there every day, they can't fully own anything end-to-end. They can't be the single point of accountability for a process or a client relationship. Someone else always has to step in when they're not available.
That someone is usually you, or your most senior operator.
So whilst you've added capacity in one area, you've also added management load in another. The work gets done, but your time hasn't actually been freed up. It's just being spent differently.
Over time, this compounds. You add more part-timers. More fragmented availability. More handovers. More coordination. And somehow, despite having more people, the business still feels like it's running through you.
The real issue: capacity ownership, not staff shortage
The problem isn't that you don't have enough people. It's that you don't have owned capacity.
Owned capacity means someone is fully responsible for an outcome. They're there when issues come up. They have the context to make decisions. They don't need someone else to pick up the thread every time they're unavailable.
Part-time staff can't provide that, not because they're incapable, but because the structure doesn't allow for it. Fragmented availability means fragmented ownership. And fragmented ownership means someone else has to carry the continuity.
What you actually need isn't another pair of hands for 15 hours a week. You need a function that's properly owned, Monday to Friday, without creating a management bottleneck.
A different approach: managed capacity instead of headcount
Some businesses have started solving this differently. Instead of hiring local part-time staff, they bring in externally managed team members who are integrated into their workflow but don't add to their internal management overhead.
These aren't contractors who work in isolation. They're people embedded in the business systems, using the same tools, attending the same meetings, but managed and coordinated by an external provider.
The distinction matters because it changes where the coordination burden sits.
When you hire part-time staff locally, you own the management. You do the onboarding, the oversight, the problem-solving, the performance management. If they're off sick or on leave, you're the one scrambling to cover.
With managed capacity, that sits elsewhere. The provider handles resourcing, training, quality control, and continuity. If someone is unavailable, they sort the replacement. You get the output without the operational overhead.
It's not about cheaper labour. It's about separating the work from the headcount and the management load that comes with it.
How this changes operations
When capacity is managed externally, a few things shift.
First, availability becomes consistent. The function is covered five days a week, not three. Questions don't sit unanswered. Work doesn't wait. The business operates at a steadier pace.
Second, you stop being the coordination layer. Someone else is making sure the work is done to standard, that deadlines are met, that issues are escalated properly. You get accountability without having to provide the day-to-day oversight.
Third, you can scale the capacity up or down without the commitment or risk of employment. Need more support during a busy quarter? You add hours. Work drops off? You pull back. There's no redundancy process, no awkward conversation, no emotional complexity.
It doesn't replace your core team. But it changes what your core team has to spend their time on. Instead of firefighting and coordination, they can focus on the work that actually needs their expertise and judgement.
A different way to think about growth
Most business owners assume that growth means more staff. More desks, more payroll, more management.
But at a certain point, adding headcount without adding structure just creates complexity. You end up with more people, but not necessarily more capacity. More conversations, but not better decisions. More coordination, but less clarity.
The businesses that scale cleanly tend to separate work from headcount earlier than most. They think about functions and outcomes, not just roles and schedules.
They ask: what needs to be owned end-to-end, and what can be handled as managed capacity?
It's a subtle shift, but it changes how the business operates. Instead of every new piece of work requiring a new person to manage, you build infrastructure that lets you add capacity without adding overhead.
Part-time staff aren't inherently the wrong choice. But if you're constantly filling gaps, managing schedules, and wondering why you're still the bottleneck despite having more people, it's worth questioning whether headcount is actually the constraint you need to solve.