The holiday season brings celebration and reflection as the year winds down. However, for businesses operating with unfilled positions, this period can become one of the most costly and stressful times of the year.
Many leaders convince themselves that waiting until January to fill open roles makes sense because hiring during the holidays seems difficult or disruptive. This decision can actually bring hidden costs that accumulate. Continue reading this article to understand why critical roles should not remain vacant over the holidays.
The Cost of Vacant Roles Over the Holidays
Leaving positions unfilled during the holiday period creates cascading problems that extend far beyond the simple absence of one employee. Some examples are:
1. Direct Financial Losses from Lost Productivity
Gallup estimates that employees who are disengaged cost the world around 8.8 trillion dollars due to lost productivity.1 If disengaged employees who are still physically present create losses of this magnitude, consider the even greater cost when positions remain completely vacant with no one performing the work at all.
These productivity losses translate directly to reduced revenue or increased costs from work that does not get completed. The cost of vacant roles compounds during holiday periods when customer activity often increases and every team member’s contribution matters more.
2. Increased Overtime and Burnout Costs
When positions stay vacant, existing employees must cover the work. This often means overtime pay that exceeds what you would have spent on regular salaries for new hires. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports an average of 33.7 overtime hours per week last August 2025 for private companies, showing just how common extended hours have become across industries.2
Extended overtime during the holidays also burns out your current staff at exactly the wrong time. Employees who spend the holiday season working extra hours to compensate for understaffing may become resentful and exhausted. This can lead to quality problems, safety incidents, or increased turnover rates.
Read more: Seasonal Staffing Strategy: Balancing Speed, Quality, and Cost
3. Damage to Team Morale and Engagement
In 2024, 53 percent of workers reported high holiday stress, and operating understaffed only increases this pressure.3 Employees who watch management leave positions unfilled while they struggle with increased workloads interpret this as lack of care for their well-being. They begin questioning whether leadership understands or values their contributions.
This morale damage spreads quickly through teams and can poison workplace culture in ways that take months to repair. Engaged employees can become disengaged when they feel abandoned.
4. Reduced Competitive Positioning
While you operate understaffed, your competitors who maintained full teams or hired proactively are capturing market share and serving customers better. They can respond faster to opportunities and deliver higher quality service.
The competitive disadvantage created by vacant positions can shift market dynamics in ways that persist long after you eventually fill the roles. Customers who switch to better-staffed competitors during the holidays may never come back even after you resume normal operations.
5. Q1 Performance Handicaps
Waiting until January to fill positions means you start Q1 already behind schedule. Employees hired in January need time for onboarding and training before they become productive, which means it will be February or March before they really contribute.
Meanwhile, your Q1 goals and commitments were set assuming you would have full teams ready on January 1st. Starting the quarter understaffed makes it nearly impossible to meet ambitious targets and creates performance gaps that compound throughout the year.
5 Strategies to Hire Efficiently Before the Holidays
Understanding the costs of vacant positions is only useful if you know how to avoid them. The following strategies help you fill critical roles before holiday disruptions impact your business.
1. Identify and Prioritize Critical Positions Now
Start by honestly assessing which vacant or soon-to-be-vacant positions will hurt your business most if they remain unfilled throughout the holidays. Not every position carries equal urgency. Focus your hiring energy on roles that directly generate revenue, serve customers, or enable other team members to be productive.
2. Simplify Your Hiring Process for Speed
Traditional hiring processes with multiple interview rounds, lengthy evaluations, and committee decisions do not work when you need to hire quickly before the holidays. Streamline your approach. Eliminate unnecessary approval layers that slow down offers. Create clear evaluation criteria so you can confidently make decisions without endless deliberation.
3. Offer Competitive Packages That Close Candidates Quickly
The holiday period often sees quality candidates with multiple options. If your compensation packages are not competitive, you will lose candidates to faster-moving employers or those offering better terms. Research current market rates for your critical positions and ensure your offers are genuinely competitive. Be prepared to negotiate and move quickly when you find strong candidates.
4. Start Onboarding Before Traditional Start Dates
Consider creative approaches that get new hires engaged before official start dates. Some companies handle paperwork and administrative onboarding in December even if the first working day is in January. This administrative head start means day one can focus on productive training rather than forms and system setup. Some roles allow for part-time or consulting arrangements that begin immediately while the person transitions from their current position. These flexible approaches compress the timeline from offer acceptance to full productivity.
5. Partner with Staffing Firms for Rapid Placement
The most effective strategy for filling critical positions before the holidays is partnering with staffing firms like Masis who specialize in rapid placement. We maintain pre-screened candidate pools ready for immediate deployment, which eliminates the weeks typically spent on sourcing and initial screening. Moreover, our established relationships with qualified professionals mean we can connect you with candidates who are available and interested right now rather than starting recruitment from scratch.
Keep your business fully staffed this holiday season with Masis.
Don’t let unfilled roles slow your momentum when it matters most. Masis Staffing ensures your operations run smoothly through the holidays with rapid, reliable staffing solutions that keep productivity high and customer satisfaction intact.
Partner with Masis today and eliminate the hidden costs of vacancy before they impact your bottom line.
References
- “Employee Engagement Strategies: Fixing the World’s $8.8 Trillion Problem.” Gallup, 13 Jun. 2022, www.gallup.com/workplace/393497/world-trillion-workplace-problem.aspx.
- “Economic News Release.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Aug. 2025, www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t23.htm.
- Robinson, Bryan. “53% Of Workers With Holiday Stress: 4 Things Employers Can Do To Help.” Forbes, 21 Nov. 2024, www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2024/11/21/53-of-workers-with-holiday-stress-4-things-employers-can-do-to-help/.
