It’s smart to take a strategic approach to holiday vacations at your business. While you want employees to enjoy well-deserved time off, you also want to be mindful of how absences will affect your bottom line.
You don’t want to find yourself in a panic on December 31st, if certain goals haven’t been reached. To make the holiday season a happy time for your employees and your business, consider these tips:
What’s Your Vision for Holiday Work?
Are November and December busy times for your business or do things throttle back, giving employees the chance to catch up on work. It’s important to define what needs to get done.
When I worked in TV news, stations had special work schedules that allowed newscasts to go out but also gave employees time to spend with family and friends. No one got Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day off. But you could get at least one holiday and the newscasts would still go out.
So is there a minimum staffing level you need to get important work done? This will determine how many people you can have out of the office at one time.
Maybe the holiday season is a slow time and you can have just a skeleton crew overseeing your operations. Know what you need to get done and have the people in place to make it happen.
Holiday Vacations: Who is Around?
Whether it’s a calendar or some other system, make it easy for employees to know who is going to be out of the office. It shouldn’t be a secret. This way people have time to make adjustments to plans, ask questions, or schedule meetings more effectively.
If you only learn of vacationing coworkers from out of office messages, then you don’t have a good notification system. It’s not surprising productivity falls during the holiday season.
Need Some Training
Are there scenarios where only one employee knows how to perform an important task? This means that when that person is out of the office, the work doesn’t get done.
Make sure at least one other employee knows how to do the task. And if that backup leaves your organization, train someone else.
This is not optional. Keep operations running smoothly and ensure that no one has to answer frantic phone calls or emails from the office, while on vacation.
Watch the Send Button
When an employee is out of the office, consider grouping your emails to him or her, rather than sending a message every time you have an idea. Over a week or two, these little messages take a lot of time to review, when the employee returns.
Can you put those emails into a daily or weekly summary? This will make it much easier for the returning worker to respond.
Provide a Smooth Reentry
It’s tough to return to the office and find out that in a matter of minutes, you’ll take part in an important meeting you didn’t know about. Immediately, any stress relief you had during your holiday vacation vanishes.
Make sure people who return to work have time to catch up and build momentum before they’re over-scheduled. While you may be eager to reengage the employee, you don’t want them to feel like they’re being punished for taking a holiday vacation.
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