Small team, zero slack.
Six people means one absence is 17% of your workforce. Here's how tiny crews stay covered.
01
Protect your reliable ones first
Small teams run on two or three people who always say yes. Every uncovered shift flows to them by default, and that's how you lose your best people to burnout. Cap it explicitly: nobody covers more than one extra shift per week unless they volunteer in writing. The rule protects them from you, not from work.
02
Cross-train one station per quarter
Your coverage surface is exactly as wide as your cross-training. Each quarter, every person learns one adjacent station — bar learns register, register learns floor. In a year, any absence has three possible covers instead of one. This is the highest-leverage thing a small shop can do.
03
Keep a bench, even a tiny one
One or two on-call people who want 5–10 hours a week are worth more than any policy. Former staff, students, semi-retired regulars — anyone reliable who likes short notice. Pay them a small retainer or first pick of good shifts. A bench of one beats a policy binder every time.
04
Post everything, even the easy ones
Small teams handle swaps by text because 'everyone knows.' Then someone doesn't know, and Saturday implodes. Post every swap to the shared board even when it feels silly — the habit is the system, and the log settles every dispute about who agreed to what.
Quick answers
We only have four people. Does any of this apply?+
More so. At four people, one absence is 25% of the crew — the bench and cross-training advice matters most. The board matters too: with four people, a missed text is a missed quarter of your team.
How do we afford a bench?+
An on-call person working 5 hours a week costs less than one Saturday of turning customers away. Frame it as insurance with a face, not headcount.
Never run this playbook again.
shiftswap turns this whole guide into one shared board. Post it, claim it, approve it — done.