Doing more with fewer people: protecting performance after downsizing

For many organisations, post-Covid reality has meant smaller teams carrying the same, or greater, workload.

This does not simply create busier people. It creates fragile systems. Knowledge sits in fewer heads. Handoffs break more easily. There is less slack for reflection, quality control or innovation.

Layer in the pressure to introduce AI as a substitute for lost headcount, and the challenge for L&D and leaders becomes clear. The task is not to encourage resilience. It is to redesign how work gets done so performance remains sustainable.

Belbin is built for exactly this moment.

It starts with a simple principle: team performance depends on visible behavioural contribution.

When teams can see how work is being carried — and where it is not — they can allocate effort intelligently rather than reactively.

Belbin’s Team report assesses how a group is likely to work together. It surfaces:

• Who is most likely to take on which responsibilities
• Where behavioural gaps or overlaps exist
• Where the team may be overly dependent on one individual

In lean teams, those insights are not interesting extras. They are operational safeguards.

The hidden cost of ambiguity

In slimmed-down teams, one variable becomes unusually expensive: role ambiguity.

Research published in the Journal of Management reports a negative correlation between role ambiguity and job performance. When people are unclear about expectations, performance drops.

Ambiguity creates duplicate effort. It delays the discovery of problems. It fuels invisible tension. Lean teams can no longer absorb these avoidable costs.

Role clarity is not administrative hygiene. It is performance protection.

Avoiding “effort over fit”

When someone leaves, their job description may be reassigned. Their behavioural contribution is often not.

This is where lean teams silently struggle. A Team Role “void” appears. Someone tries to compensate through effort rather than fit.

Belbin’s framework makes these gaps visible. It allows teams to ask:

• What contribution have we lost?
• Who can credibly cover it?
• Where do we need support rather than goodwill?

Belbin’s own guidance on building lean teams highlights the risk of non-utilised talent — failing to use people’s experience, knowledge, creativity or ideas. This often links to poor communication, narrowly defined roles and limited inclusion in problem-solving.

Downsizing can unintentionally increase these risks. Roles narrow in the name of speed. Communication becomes transactional. People stop offering ideas because “we don’t have time.”

By identifying each person’s positive behavioural contributions, Belbin enables smarter task matching. Work can be aligned to strengths. Coverage becomes deliberate rather than accidental. Frustration and rework decrease.

Where AI fits, and where it doesn’t

AI is often positioned as the answer to reduced headcount. And it can help.

A large field study of a generative AI assistant in customer support reported an average 14% productivity increase, with larger gains among less experienced workers. There were also indications of improved retention.

These findings are encouraging. But they point to a critical design principle.

AI can compress task time. It does not replace Team Roles.

Someone still has to:

• Clarify the goal (Co-ordinator behaviour)
• Challenge assumptions (Monitor Evaluator behaviour)
• Safeguard standards (Completer Finisher behaviour)
• Drive momentum without burnout (Shaper behaviour)

Measuring resilience properly

If lean redesign is working, it will show up in practical ways:

• Fewer bottlenecks
• Faster, cleaner handoffs
• Reduced rework
• Clearer ownership
• Lower stress signals in engagement data

The goal is not to “cope” with fewer people. It is to build a team structure where contribution is visible, balanced and sustainable.

How Belbin can help

Belbin helps lean teams protect performance by making behavioural contribution, and therefore ownership, visible.

Team reports identify gaps, overlaps and dependency risks. This enables faster reallocation of work and reduces hidden single points of failure.

Individual reports, ideally incorporating observer input, help people articulate how they contribute best and where they need support. This is particularly important when roles have expanded or shifted.

Working Relationship reports help stabilise high-friction handoffs between individuals or functions.

For L&D teams operating at scale, Belbin’s online platform, Interplace, supports organisation-wide reporting and structured workflows. It allows administrators to generate individual, team and working relationship reports through a transparent credit-based system, making large-scale rollout manageable and cost-controlled.

Belbin Accreditation builds internal capability, enabling organisations to deliver consistent, high-quality debriefs and embed behavioural clarity into everyday team practice.