Staffing Shifts Across Multiple Locations: When an Enterprise Process Makes Sense

As long as you have one branch, staffing is a manageable problem: ad in, reply in the chat, hire. With three, five, ten locations that tips over. Suddenly every location manager writes their own ads, nobody has an overview, good applicants get lost because two branches don't coordinate — and at month's end nobody knows where the money and time actually went. That's the point where a structured process is no longer a luxury but a cost question.

This article helps you honestly assess when that point is reached — and when single ads are perfectly sufficient. Because the most expensive mistake is both: over-structuring too early or scaling too late.

You don't need an enterprise process because it exists. You need it when you recognise these symptoms:

• Several people write ads independently. No consistent presence, duplicate work, contradictory details.
• Applicants fall through between locations. Someone doesn't fit branch A but would be perfect for B — and nobody notices.
• You plan needs ahead, not just acutely. Seasonal peaks at several places at once can no longer be solved ad hoc.
• Nobody can answer the simple question: "How many open shifts do we have where right now, and how fast do we fill them?"
• Reporting is manual work. Figures are pieced together from gut feeling and Excel.

If three of these appear, the unstructured route is already costing you more than an orderly one — you just don't see it on an invoice. The DIHK skills report 2025/2026 makes clear that shortages remain a challenge — with multiple locations this pressure multiplies.

It's not about "more software" but about four concrete levers:

1. Shared applicant pipeline. Candidates aren't "trapped" in one branch but visible across locations. A good profile isn't lost just because it arrived at the wrong place.
2. Team roles & rights. Location manager, central recruiters, overview for management — everyone sees and does what fits their role.
3. Talent pool instead of starting from zero. Whoever was reliable once is reachable again at the next need — not buried in an old chat.
4. Analytics & data export. How long a fill takes per location, which ad pulls, where it sticks. Decisions on figures instead of gut feeling.

Multilingualism remains the cross-cutting advantage — as described in the article "Job ads in three languages", only consistently across all locations.

Be honest here about your own size. The simple model — pay per ad or credits — is exactly right for most small and medium businesses and stays so for a long time. It only becomes a bottleneck when the individual ad is no longer the problem but coordination, roles, and evaluation across many locations. Then you no longer pay for "making one role visible" but for "making a process controllable" — that's a different need.

The logic behind it is transparent on the pricing page; the options for larger structures on the Enterprise page. Deliberately without figures here that would be out of date tomorrow — the question is not "what does it cost" but "which problem are you solving right now".

The counter-point that honest advice adds: whoever sets up a heavy process with two locations and occasional needs builds overhead they don't need. Scale when the symptoms are there — not because "enterprise" sounds more professional. The right order is always: first the pain, then the structure.

Staffing shifts across multiple locations is not a bigger but a different problem than the single temporary help. Recognise the signals, name the actual bottleneck — coordination, not visibility — and then decide. How to screen applicants efficiently in such a setup is deepened in the article "Screening applicants faster".