Covering when stretched
Given the stop-start situation of foreign travel, it’s looking increasingly likely that the holiday season will stretch beyond the usual summer months as people delay travel until later in the year. For some, taking a concentrated hit during the school holidays is just about bearable, but how will managers cope when the holiday season is extended, especially in light of the current ‘pingdemic’.
For small and growing businesses that are often resource light, the holiday season is a time of added stress. To help you we have pulled together some practical tips which we hope you find useful.
1. Review your policy
Firstly, make sure you have clear rules in place; setting out how much notice to give, how many people can be off at a certain time and what you expect if employees want to change their arrangements; the latter point is much more of an issue since COVID-19 than ever before.
Last year the government made changes to the Working Time Regulations which enabled employees who hadn’t been able to take leave to carry them over for up to two years. From talking to people over the last few weeks, we don’t think that this is widely known so it is worth reading up on the changes that ACAS has set out here - https://www.acas.org.uk/coronavirus/using-holiday.
2. Think about your employees first
There may be situations where more people request the same dates than your policy would normally allow - but take a view. If there is a small overlap, you may be able to cope and being flexible is a great way to keep your team engaged. Organisations that can genuinely demonstrate flexibility will attract and retain the best talent and will therefore have a much stronger foundation for success.
3. Customers should come a very close second
This isn’t to say your customers are less important than your staff, everyone knows old adage “The Customer is King”. But come back to our point about an engaged workforce, you need your team to be happy and productive if you want your customers to get a great service.
So, if you know that you are under resourced, you should communicate quickly to your customers and explain what the potential impact on them might be. Do you need to push a deadline back, or reduce hours slightly? Provided you are upfront with customers they are unlikely to mind, especially if you can give clear guidance setting out when you are back up to full strength.
4. Pause non-urgent projects and reduce inbox time
Are there initiatives during the summer months that could be paused or done differently to reduce workload during the holiday season. Pushing out non-core activities will ease capacity in other areas. If you can’t work out what sort of things to pause, you might want to read up on Franklin Covey’s “Wildy Important Goals ( WIGs)”. This principal should help you to determine what tasks are essential to your business and what tasks play a secondary role. Since the onslaught of emails, it’s all too easy to get caught up in your inbox answering questions which could often wait or be handled much quicker with a telephone call. Take a step back and make sure everything you are doing is aligned to your WIGs.
5. Rebalance workloads
This is perhaps the hardest task as piling work on top of others can cause resentment – especially if the communication around this process isn’t clear. Get teams together and ask people to pair up so that urgent work can be kept moving, if the arrangement is reciprocal, it will feel much fairer.
6. Be proactive
As leaders, it’s our job to be proactive and ensure that resources and activities are planned throughout the year. Is there anything you can do to help people plan ahead, so teams aren’t left with large allocations to take over busy periods? A simple prompt may help to smooth the peaks and troughs.
There is no single answer to crack this, but one common principal does apply - communication. If as leaders we are clear, consistent, and frequent in our communication we are far more likely to create an engaged workforce willing to go that extra mile, and a satisfied and understanding customer base.
