Meaning & use
understaffing
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountablebusiness
A situation in which an organization has too few workers to do its work properly.
Grammar: Uncountable: do not use an or an, and do not make it plural.
Patterns
- understaffing in something
- chronic understaffing
- suffer from understaffing
Chronic understaffing at the hospital has left nurses exhausted.
The report blamed delays on understaffing rather than poor planning.
Understaffing is a common complaint in the restaurant industry.
Common combinations
- chronic understaffing
- Chronic understaffing has forced the clinic to close some wards.
- understaffing in hospitals
- Understaffing in hospitals is putting patients at risk.
- suffer from understaffing
- The whole department suffers from understaffing every winter.
- a problem of understaffing
- The union described the issue as a problem of understaffing, not of training.
Synonyms and how they differ
- short-staffing
- Very close in meaning, but more informal and often used in British English.
- staff shortage
- A countable phrase for the same idea; you can say a staff shortage or staff shortages.
Opposites
Word family
- understaffed adjective
- Having too few workers.
- overstaffed adjective
- Having more workers than are needed.
- staff noun
- The people who work for an organization.
Commonly confused: understaffing or understanding?
understaffing vs understanding
Understanding means knowing or sympathizing; understaffing means having too few employees.
Practice
The ward was so busy that nurses said the real problem was ______, not the new computer system.
Choose one answer.
Understaffing is uncountable, so it takes no article and no plural form. Option 0 wrongly adds an, option 2 wrongly makes it plural, and option 3 is a verb form that does not fit after was.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “understaffing”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.