Air carrier ground personnel reported the lack of adequate staffing and lack of clear communication from ramp leadership resulted in last minute cargo reconfiguration of DG cargo.

Narrative

I am a mentor for the gates in ZZZ. Yesterday was the first day of a two week process with employees on meeting metrics and following SOP. While working the above noted flight; we almost did not secure the DG (Dangerous Goods) with 15 bags. The flight started out with myself; the Lead and one Ramp Agent. Due to this lack of manpower; I made a radio call for assistance to the supervisor. No response. I went inside to print the DSTG (Departure Staging Guide) while the Lead on the gate planned the flight. The Lead knew to plan for 15 bags for the DG. DSTG called for 2 pieces of DG (1 AOM and 1 UN3373) and baggage. When I came out from printing the DSTG; I informed the Lead it would be better to load regular bags to surround the DG than the priority bags because they weren't showing that many for priority bags to begin with. The plan showed 16 priority and 66 regular bags. Due to lack of manpower I went to the doorway of the AFT cargo pit and assisted a ramp agent to load the DG AFT. The Lead was the only other employee at the gate so we loaded the 148lbs of DG into the pit. The Lead planned for the priority bags for 4 to surround the DSTG which was not how I instructed him to do it. The Lead scanned all of the bags and I helped load them into the pit with the other ramp agent in the pit. After this DG was loaded and we secured it with bags; we left the pit and began to close it up to proceed to the FWD pit for baggage load. At that time; the 2nd piece of DG came (AOM) and we re-opened the pit webbing AFT to accommodate the 250lbs of DG (AOM). At this point we weren't sure whether to load the two DG separately and secure them separately or load the DG together and secure them together with 15 bags rather than 30. The policy is not clear when handling DG planned that are two separate shipments arriving separately. We decided to load them together and secure them with the bags we had already loaded. Prior to loading I made another call for help. When two of my counterparts came to assist they confirmed that i should load the DG together. It appeared that the DG was secured with bags. After loading the 2nd DG we were still short staffed; so I called again for help from the ramp supervisor. No response. Seeing the clock was ticking; I proceeded with Lead and the other ramp agent to load bags FWD after closing the AFT. I jumped into the FWD pit while the Lead scanned and the other ramp agent loaded bags on the belt while I stacked the FWD pit. As I was running out of room in Pit 3 I peeked out of the pit to inform the Lead to scan everything else in Pit 2 when I discovered the Lead was not there and that the supervisor was there scanning bags while the other ramp agent loaded the bags on the beltloader. After a while; the supervisor approached me saying that there was a notification on the scanner to which the supervisor cleared it. As he was walking away the supervisor received another notification on the scanner (Lead's scanner) about a reroute tag that was scanned. At this point now I stopped the upload process to ensure the integrity of the load and started to check the bags that were loaded to see if any were for another destination. After everything looked good; I told the supervisor and he said I might have missed a few bags." At this point the supervisor started to scan the bags already in the pit 2 to make sure he got them all. I left the pit now and started to close the webbing and left part of it open for late bags. I came out the pit and spoke to the Lead to check missing bags. Scanner showed approx. 25 bags missing. This can be attributed to the scanner problem the supervisor encountered. I went inside the breakroom after conferring with the Lead to call Load Panning and to research the missing bags and close out the flight. I saw my other colleague to assist me in closing out the flight. While inside we tried closing the flight out on the scanner first and that is when we discovered that the DG was not secured with 15 bags. I ran out the breakroom to tell the Lead and unfortunately they had already pushed off of the gate and were already in the alleyway. I ran out there and informed the captain that DG was not secured and to spool down the engine so we can move bags from Pit 3 to Pit 4. I informed the captain that we would have to tow him back in to do this and the captain requested to have it done where they were in the alleyway. I complied with the request as I was not aware of any restrictions disabling us from doing so as it is done in other stations across the system. We complied with all SOP in regards to loading bags after pushback. We took a few bags from pit 3 and loaded them into pit 4. to secure the DG properly. My job as a mentor is to observe the coach in the moment. I was unable to do so in this case due to the lack of manpower and communication from ramp leadership which ultimately disabled my ability to focus on my job so I had to ensure that we got the flight out on time by acting as an additional employee. I strongly believe that if we had the manpower there to work the flight I could have focused on my responsibilities and I would have caught all of the errors on this departure to avoid all of this unpleasantness."