Conversations about staffing a procurement team mostly revolve around the big “chunks”. A tender, a project that needs supporting, an ERP implementation. Those projects are visible, they have a schedule, and capacity is set aside for them.
After more than twenty-five years in this field, I would go so far as to say this: most procurement teams are not understaffed for their projects. They are understaffed for the work that has to be done in between.
The work that is on no schedule
Look at an ordinary week for a buyer. Dropping in on an internal stakeholder, chasing a supplier who has not yet responded to a request for quotation, an invoice that does not match the PO, a colleague who needs help with a contract, and so on.
Added together, this is a large part of the week.
Tenders get attention, the rest does not
Large projects get the attention they deserve. There is a steering committee, a schedule, deadlines everyone knows. If such a project slips, the board notices.
The day-to-day work has none of that. If it is left undone, nobody notices straight away. It quietly piles up, until at some other moment, somewhere else, it becomes a problem.
Work without an owner
Much of that work also has no clear owner. Who keeps track of the notice period on a contract the IT department once signed on its own? Who checks whether a new supplier meets all the requirements?
In practice it either does not get done, or it lands with whoever feels called upon to pick it up. Often that is the most experienced buyer on the team. And so the time of your most expensive people disappears into the least visible work.
The most experienced buyer’s time often goes into work that nobody owns.
Why it is never finished
The difference with project work is that this work has no end. A tender is completed. A contract is signed. But suppliers keep delivering, contracts keep running and the organisation keeps asking questions.
Every contract you sign adds work for years to come: monitoring performance, assessing renewals, checking price indexations, having the conversation when things go wrong. A procurement team that does good work therefore structurally creates more work for itself.
The work has no season, staffing does
The work carries on all year round. Staffing does not.
In the Netherlands you see it every summer. The construction industry’s summer shutdown, the school holidays, colleagues who are away for three weeks. Suppliers run on a skeleton crew or close for a few weeks. But customers keep asking for deliveries, notice periods simply expire and production still needs its parts.
A notice period that expires in August expires in August. Even if the person managing the contract is at a campsite in France.
Illness, leave and departures
Besides the predictable gaps, there are the unpredictable ones. Long-term illness. Maternity leave. A colleague who leaves unexpectedly, with one month’s notice.
In a team of three buyers, one absent colleague means a third less capacity, while the work stays exactly the same. In smaller organisations the buyer is sometimes the only one who knows which contracts are running. Then a single absence means that many things simply stop getting picked up.
A vacancy stays open longer than you think
And when someone leaves, the gap is bigger than most organisations expect.
Good buyers are scarce, and that will not improve in the coming years; we wrote earlier about the ageing of the profession and about the hidden costs of that scarcity. You rarely find an experienced category manager or strategic buyer within a few weeks. Expect months instead, plus a notice period, plus the time someone needs to get to know the organisation, the suppliers and the running contracts.
All that time, the work goes on.
The hidden costs of “we’ll absorb it internally”
The reflex when there is a gap in staffing is almost always the same: we’ll absorb it internally. The rest of the team takes it over. That is loyal, and for a few weeks it works too.
But look at what actually happens. Short-term matters get picked up straight away; longer-term matters get pushed back. Market research and contract renewals are the things that get left. Supplier meetings are postponed. And the team absorbing the work gets tired at exactly the moment you can least afford it. You don’t see those costs in the short term; they only come later, in the form of a contract that was never renegotiated.
Capacity is not a peak but a baseline
The underlying problem is a flaw in how procurement capacity is budgeted. The calculation is based on the projects, and the day-to-day work is seen as something that can be fitted in on the side.
It is the other way round. The day-to-day work is the base load, and it is always there. The projects come on top of it. If you staff for an average week without holidays, illness or departures, you have a team that is almost never at full strength.
Interim is not an emergency measure
This is where temporary capacity comes in. Not as an emergency measure, but as a way to let capacity move with a workload that is not evenly spread.
An interim buyer is not the solution to everything. For a structural shortage you need a permanent colleague. But for maternity leave, a vacancy that stays open too long, a tender that temporarily needs extra hands, or a backlog in contract management that has to be cleared first, it is often the most logical choice.
The advantage is not just the extra capacity. An experienced interim professional is somewhat overqualified, has worked in many different organisations, knows the subject matter, therefore knows where the pain points usually lie, and as a result settles in quickly.
Mind the rules
Anyone hiring someone temporarily in the Netherlands has to take several laws into account, such as the Wet DBA (the Dutch rules on hiring self-employed contractors) and the Wtta (the new admission requirement for companies that supply workers). Since 2025 the Dutch Tax Administration has resumed enforcement against false self-employment. In 2026 a transition period still applies: where there is a suspicion, the Tax Administration in principle starts with a company visit and at most a warning, and no default penalties are imposed. In cases of intent or gross negligence, however, a fine can already follow.
From 1 January 2027 the rules will be fully enforced. That does not make interim hiring risky, but how it is set up does matter: a clearly defined assignment with a start and an end, and a self-employed professional who genuinely behaves as an entrepreneur. If you arrange it properly, you have nothing to worry about.
Four questions to measure your real capacity
How much of the week goes to work that is on no schedule? Have the team keep track for two weeks. The answer almost always comes as a surprise.
How many running contracts does each buyer manage? Not how many projects they are doing, but how many agreements they have to monitor.
What happens to the work if one person drops out for three months? If the answer is “we’ll absorb it”, then ask: what gets left undone?
Which notice periods and renewals fall in the summer or around the holidays? And who keeps an eye on them when the contract owner is away?
Conclusion
A procurement team’s work is never done, and that is not a sign that it is working badly. It is the nature of the profession: every good contract generates years of work, and the day-to-day work does not stop for holidays, illness or vacancies. If you staff only for the projects, you budget for the visible part of the work and forget the part that takes the most time.
So don’t plan for the average week; plan for the week when someone is missing. That week always comes, and usually in summer.
