"Future Lost Sales": The Hidden Cost of Lean Staffing in Academic Libraries

In academic libraries, lean staffing has long been portrayed as efficient, necessary, and even virtuous—something to endure quietly, even as we're taught to continue advocating for more support, more staffing, and more recognition. But what if this austerity model is quietly eroding the very foundation of our impact? What if the cost of lean staffing isn't just current stress—but future lost sales?

In Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life, Brigid Schulte shares an insight from UNC Chapel Hill professor Saravanan Kesavan: understaffing a service area can be far more costly to a business than overstaffing. Why? Because every bad experience—a disorganized service point, a missed question, a lack of personal attention—can lead not only to a lost transaction, but to the loss of a lifetime customer.

This concept of “future lost sales” should strike a chord with every academic librarian. In our world, we’re not losing retail revenue—we’re losing something more: student retention, learning outcomes, and long-term engagement. And the damage? It doesn’t show up on the balance sheet.

From Gap Stores to Academic Libraries: The Case for Stability

A compelling parallel can be drawn from a landmark study of 28 Gap stores conducted by Joan Williams, Susan Lambert, and Saravanan Kesavan. The study found that stores empowered to provide workers with more consistent hours and schedules—through predictable shifts, improved scheduling apps, and prioritizing experienced workers—saw:

• 7% increase in median sales compared to control stores

• 5.1% boost in store-level labor productivity

• Lower turnover among seasoned staff

• Improved employee wellbeing across consistency, predictability, and participation in scheduling

These changes required no revolutionary budgets—just a smarter reallocation of hours and attention to employee stability. The lesson is clear: stability is a performance strategy, not just a personnel one.

Academic libraries can learn from this. We often rely on a small, overburdened staff expected to meet expansive mandates: AI integration, DEIA initiatives, digital learning, information literacy, academic support. When leadership fails to provide additional staffing—even after successful advocacy—libraries may be forced to drop or deprioritize programs. But the fallout is hidden: a disengaged student, a faculty member who stops collaborating, a learner who never comes back.

These are our "future lost sales."

Stability Is More Than Scheduling—It’s Filling the Gaps

The Gap study spotlighted how even modest improvements in scheduling led to measurable gains. But in academic libraries, the challenge is often more severe: when positions go unfilled, their responsibilities are redistributed—not removed. Each vacancy silently transfers weight onto colleagues, increasing the risk of burnout, errors, and disengagement.

This isn’t just a scheduling issue—it’s a structural flaw.

When leadership delays backfilling roles or expects remaining employees to absorb the workload indefinitely, they reinforce a culture of “doing more with less.” But the cost is steep: lost trust, lost effectiveness, and eventually, lost patrons.

To truly close the gap, libraries must look beyond shift consistency. We need:

• Timely hiring to prevent skill atrophy and morale erosion

• Cross-training so critical services aren’t bottlenecked by single points of failure

• Transparent communication about what is being deprioritized due to capacity limits

The future lost sales of libraries aren’t abstract—they’re the disengaged students who feel unsupported, the faculty who stop referring, the community members who don’t return.

What You Can Do When You're Overworked and Understaffed

If you're an academic librarian facing chronic overwork, here are practical steps to mitigate harm and advocate for better outcomes:

1. Prioritize with Purpose

Adopt a triage mindset—not in the reactive sense, but as a strategic method. Identify high-impact projects that align with institutional goals (retention, equity, assessment) and deprioritize others. Document what’s been paused—and why.

2. Make Invisible Work Visible

Use dashboards, annual reports, or even informal infographics to highlight tasks that are often unseen: instructional design, student mentoring, technical upkeep. Let stakeholders know what goes undone when staffing gaps persist.

3. Practice Compassionate Delegation

If you supervise others, protect them from inherited overload. Model realistic boundaries and avoid passing on the pressure to “just handle it.”

4. Create an “Invisible Costs” Log

Track missed opportunities: classes turned down, partnerships delayed, grants unpursued. This evidence becomes crucial when you renew your staffing requests.

5. Pilot Low-Effort, High-Value Projects

Sometimes a small shift can yield large returns. The Gap study found that even modest improvements in shift consistency resulted in large performance gains. Can you pilot a change that improves scheduling, cross-training, or workflow stability for student workers or part-time staff?

Closing the Gap: Stability is an Equity Issue

The New York Times reporting on the Gap study added a human lens: workers like Sam Stephenson couldn’t rely on their schedules or income. That uncertainty breeds anxiety, attrition, and inequity—just as it does in academic libraries.

“We basically held up a mirror to capitalism’s self-image of efficiency,” said Joan Williams, “and showed the misaligned incentives that are disserving both workers and the company.”

Academic libraries have internalized a similar narrative: lean teams are nimble, adaptable, proud. But the truth is, our stability determines our effectiveness. Student success, DEIA progress, and faculty collaboration don’t thrive on burnout.

By resisting the culture of triage and embracing staffing strategies rooted in predictability, trust, and experience, we invest in long-term student outcomes—the kind that don’t show up in quarterly reports but shape lives.

Further Reading

• Brigid Schulte, Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life (2025)

• Noam Scheiber, “A Find at Gap: Steady Hours Can Help Workers, and Profits,” New York Times, March 28, 2018

• Joan C. Williams, Susan Lambert, Saravanan Kesavan, “Stable Scheduling Increases Productivity and Sales,” 2018 Gap Study