Staff shortage: how do you cover the work without hiring more people?
By Joey van Vliet, founderUpdated 6 min read
The short answer
First look at which work is being left undone. Work that needs expertise, judgement or personal contact is covered by people: hiring, outsourcing or a virtual assistant. Work that goes the same way every week, such as sending reminders, sorting questions and retyping data, can be taken over by an AI employee. A person keeps the decision, and your team keeps time for the work you hired them for.
About this guide: written by Your Tech Club. We don't name other companies and we don't quote amounts we can't back up. How we do it ourselves is set out separately under How Your Tech Club works. Want to know where that sits for you first? See the AI Opportunity Audit.
How big is the staff shortage in the Netherlands?
At the end of the second quarter of 2026 there were 375,000 open vacancies, according to Statistics Netherlands (CBS). For every 100 unemployed people there were 95 vacancies. These are provisional figures.
It varies a lot by sector. Healthcare, retail and wholesale, and business services together held over half of all open vacancies. Construction had the highest vacancy rate: 73 vacancies per thousand jobs.
In an organisation of twenty or fifty people, you often notice it like this: a vacancy stays open for a long time, and the work of that role gets spread across the rest of the team.
Which work is being left undone?
A staff shortage feels like one problem, but it's usually several at once. Split the work that's being left undone into three kinds:
- Specialist work: work that needs training or experience, such as that of an engineer, a nurse or a bookkeeper.
- Contact work: conversations with customers, patients or colleagues where judgement or empathy is the core.
- Repetitive work: sending reminders, sorting email, retyping data, chasing documents and answering the phone for the same questions.
Specialist work and contact work are covered by people. Repetitive work is where an AI employee can make the difference, and it's often work your specialists are doing on top of their own.
Hiring, outsourcing, a virtual assistant or an AI employee?
There are several ways to cover work without taking someone on permanently. Hiring and outsourcing are grouped below, because in both cases a person does the work. Each option suits a different kind of work.
- Suits
- Hiring or outsourcing
- Specialist and contact work, or work you hand over entirely
- Virtual assistant
- Varied tasks with some judgement, done remotely
- AI employee
- Repetitive work that goes the same way every week
- Getting started
- Hiring or outsourcing
- A person or provider has to learn your organisation
- Virtual assistant
- An assistant has to learn your systems and preferences
- AI employee
- Set up and tested on your own rules and systems, alongside your team at first
- Availability
- Hiring or outsourcing
- Working hours or the contract
- Virtual assistant
- The agreed hours, remotely
- AI employee
- Keeps working outside office hours, within the limits you agree
- With more work
- Hiring or outsourcing
- More hours or an extra person
- Virtual assistant
- More hours
- AI employee
- Designed to do the same work more often; you test how much it handles up front
- Access to your systems
- Hiring or outsourcing
- Depends on the role
- Virtual assistant
- Someone outside gets access to your email and systems
- AI employee
- Only the access you agree per task
- What stays with a person
- Hiring or outsourcing
- Everything: a person does the work
- Virtual assistant
- Everything: a person does the work
- AI employee
- Decisions, exceptions and contact where judgement is the core
When is hiring or outsourcing the best choice?
- The work needs expertise you don't have, such as that of a bookkeeper, a payroll specialist or an engineer.
- The work is about conversations: advice, complaints, guidance.
- It's temporary, such as a peak, a project or cover during sickness.
- Your processes aren't in order yet. Then you first need someone to sort them out.
What is a virtual assistant, and when does one fit?
A virtual assistant is usually a person who works for you remotely, as a freelancer or through an agency. They handle varied tasks, such as keeping your diary and inbox in order, formatting documents or looking things up.
That suits work that's different every time and needs some judgement. It suits a fixed process with lots of repetition less well: then you're paying for hours that an AI employee or an integration could also cover. The term is also used for AI assistants, so always ask whether you're working with a person or with software.
With a virtual assistant, think about who gets access to your email and systems, and agree how customer and employee data is handled.
What does an AI employee take over, and what not?
An AI employee is software that does a defined task in your own systems, within rules you set. It takes over the repetitive work; a person keeps the decision. So it doesn't replace a colleague, it removes the work that's holding your colleagues up.
- AI employee: Pick up the workFrom the mailbox, the ticketing system or the accounts.
- AI employee: Sort and checkWhat is it, is it complete, what belongs with it?
- AI employee: Handle the repetitive partA reminder, a fixed answer, a draft.
- Person: Assess the exceptionAnything outside the agreed rules.
- Person: DecideApprove, reject or do it differently.
- AI employee: Follow upTrack what was agreed and flag what's stalling.
Which option suits which work?
We've worked out the same choice for specific kinds of work, with the options side by side and honest about when hiring or outsourcing fits better.
What does it cost to cover the work?
What hiring, outsourcing or a virtual assistant costs depends on the hours, the role and the provider. We don't quote averages: they say little about your situation.
What you can work out is what the repetitive work costs you now, in hours of your own team. That's also the work that gets left undone when someone drops out.
How do you start?
- Write down which work has been left undone since the vacancy opened, or what your team still finishes in the evening.
- Sort it: specialist work, contact work or repetitive work.
- Find people for the specialist and contact work: hiring, outsourcing or a virtual assistant.
- Pick one piece of repetitive work to automate, and run it alongside your team first.
- Not sure where to start? Have it mapped, for example with an audit.
How Your Tech Club helps
This part is about us. The points above apply to any partner, including us: feel free to hold us to them.
We start with the AI Opportunity Audit. In five working days, together with the people who do the work, we map where manual work is holding back your growth and what it costs. The outcome can also be that you're better off hiring someone or outsourcing something. If so, the report says so.
If you then choose AI employees, we build them into your own systems and agree for each task what may run automatically and what a person approves.
At De Duurzame Jongens, the audit identified €500,000 a year in growth opportunities.
- ISO 9001 and ISO 27001, certified by Kiwa
- 500 projects delivered
- 4.8 from 127 reviews
- 90% returning clients
- Office on Duivendrechtsekade in Amsterdam
- Founded by Joey van Vliet and Yassine Seghrouchni
Frequently asked questions
What can you do about a staff shortage?
First look at which work is being left undone and sort it: specialist work, contact work and repetitive work. Specialist and contact work are covered by people, through hiring or outsourcing. An AI employee can take over the repetitive work, so your team keeps time for the rest.
How big is the staff shortage in the Netherlands?
According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), there were 375,000 open vacancies at the end of the second quarter of 2026, and 95 vacancies for every 100 unemployed people. These are provisional figures. Construction had the highest vacancy rate.
What's the difference between a virtual assistant and an AI employee?
A virtual assistant is usually a person who handles varied tasks remotely. An AI employee is software that does one defined task in your own systems, within rules you set. A virtual assistant suits varied work, an AI employee suits repetitive work.
What does it cost to hire a virtual assistant?
That varies by experience, by country and whether you go through an agency or work with a freelancer. You usually pay by the hour or for a fixed number of hours a month. Set it against what the work costs you now; our manual work calculator helps with that.
Does an AI employee replace a colleague?
No. An AI employee takes over the repetitive work; a person keeps the decision. During a staff shortage that helps your current team: the work that goes the same way every week falls away, leaving time for specialist work and contact.
Where do I start if I don't know which work to automate?
Keep track for a week of what your team does and what's left undone. Or have it mapped: in the AI Opportunity Audit we do that in five working days, with what the current work costs and which opportunities deliver the most.
