I’ll be home for Christmas. Or at least your employees plan to be…
The holiday season leaves many small business owners stressed about how to balance the needs of their business with a generous holiday vacation schedule for their employees…
How can you be fair to everyone?
There are a lot of things to consider as you try to strike a balance. You may have orders to deliver or you may need to have the shop manned to greet new customers. Your company has to deliver on promises already made to clients while allowing your employees to be with their loved ones.
Being a glass-half-full kinda guy I’ve always looked at the holidays as a time to create a strategic advantage for my company. And my best strategic advantage is a motivated and aligned workforce…
During the holidays everyone wants to be with their family…
And it’s the one time of year when people are certain to compare notes about their employer’s vacation policy…
If they miss a friend’s or family gathering because they’re at work then you can bet it’ll be public knowledge in their private circle and at least one person will suggest they find a better place to work…
My goal during the holidays is to serve my clients well and not have my employees think of me as a scrooge…
How you do that depends greatly upon the industry you’re in…
In manufacturing you may have the luxury to produce ahead of schedule so you can shut down or reduce to a skeleton crew…
If your company does project work you can often ease up on the daily grind to allow for a generous holiday vacation schedule…
If you’re in retail, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be open every day except Christmas. And that’s not even a guarantee anymore…
For service businesses your holiday schedule will depend greatly on your client’s holiday schedule and the amount of attention they require…
While there is no one size fits all solution to this annual frustration, I thought it would be useful to give you a guide and help you keep your sanity. Here are 9 things you can do to help you navigate the holidays in your specific situation.
Make it easy for everyone to understand.
1) Communication. Communication. Communication. Make sure your employees know what your company’s holiday schedule is in advance.
Ideally this should be done at least four times.
i) During new employee orientation;
ii) In your employee handbook;
iii) At the beginning of the year when you provide the list of holidays your company observes;
iv) In late October or early November when everyone starts thinking about their holiday vacation plans.
Your employee handbook should list the holidays you customarily observe. It should describe your company’s approach to serving your clients during these times of year while allowing employees to take vacation and spend time with family.
Each of your notices throughout the year should reference your employee handbook.
2) Make sure that your employees know and understand what coverage is needed during the holiday season.
When your employees know how many people will be needed in advance they can start planning ahead of time. Often they’ll discuss coverage amongst themselves to avoid too many people asking for the same days off.
It’s important to remind them which days you’ll be closed and whether you’ll need a skeleton crew or possibly work modified shifts.
3) Cultivate a list of seasonal or part-time help. I love this option and as a small business owner it’s really indispensable. As a business owner you should develop a list of part-time employees that can fill in at several spots in your business. There are many people who are retired and enjoy having a gig like this.
They allow you to keep your sanity, keep your clients happy, and keep your employees engaged and happy to work for you.
I’ve often used seasonal employees to help out during other periods of high demand, not just for the holidays…
Utilizing them throughout the year lets me keep in touch with them, and they stay fairly current on what’s happening in my business. That way they can easily step in and help out whenever I need them.
Having more than one seasonal or part-time employee keeps you from depending on just one person…
It’s about flexibility. And this is one simple way to build it in…
4) Have both a deadline for requests and a date after which requests will be considered.
Without guidelines some employees will assume a first-come-first-serve system and they’ll submit their request months in advance believing that gives them priority. Make sure that your employees understand that you’ll begin considering requests after a certain date and that requests made after the window closes will not be considered.
5) Look at your data and the calendar and forecast what will happen.
If you’re trying to figure out what’ll happen in your business this year the best way to do that is to take a look at the last couple years and apply adjustments for any significant changes that have occurred and create a forecast. You really should be forecasting all the time as part of your monthly and quarterly planning anyway…
Knowing whether the Christmas and New Year’s holidays fall on a Saturday or a Wednesday can have a real impact on how you staff your business. Don’t be afraid to make some assumptions and put a plan in place. At worst, you’ll be a little off, but you won’t be catastrophically wrong as long as you’ve applied some thought to it.
Convert your sales forecast to a labor forecast, and now you have a foundation to build your vacation schedule on.
6) Make sure you have a decent mix of staffers and supervisors.
If you only have lower level staff present then you may create a morale problem when they notice that all the managers got the holidays off. It creates the impression that some pigs are more equal than others.
You may want to give your senior leadership team time off too, and that’s perfectly understandable. I’m sure they’ve earned it. Try to work out at least short periods of time where they can be present and helping out. This kind of leadership is invaluable. Literally just being present can make all the difference in the world in morale.
7) Have open conversation.
In everyday conversation when you’re talking to your employees find out what their plans are for the holidays. Knowing is half the battle. Casual conversation allows you to pick each other’s brain and share information. They’ll know what you’re thinking and vice versa.
For example: if they know that you’re expecting to land a big contract just before the holidays then they won’t be surprised when you deviate from the prior year’s generous plan and ask a few more people to be at the office.
8) Know your employee’s travel plans.
This one is subtle but it’s very important. If you know which employees are traveling great distances then it helps you understand why they need so much time off. It also helps you because you won’t be surprised when issues with a flight or weather delay their return. Develop contingency plans to handle work normally performed by the employee who’s flying a great distance for the holidays. It’s simply a matter of avoiding surprises.
9) Approve generously.
During the holidays nothing is worse for an employee than showing up for a half day and doing nothing. They’ll sit there for four hours thinking they could have been home with their family. Often times, those that are coming in would rather be busy so that more of their teammates can be home. And it helps their workday pass more quickly.
One way of doing this is to designate a few employees as on-call or backup. Let them know that they’ll be home for the holiday but if you need added help for some reason, they will be called in. At least they won’t be at work unnecessarily.
Show me the system.
Have a system for figuring out how all the days and processes will actually be covered.
After you’ve taken care of the 9 tips above, you need to get down to the nitty-gritty of actually deciding who gets to be home for Christmas and who’s working. Here are 9 methods for you to choose from…
i) Allow your employees to figure it out on their own after you state the company needs. Your business places a lot of demands on your employees. When it comes to holiday scheduling I like to give my employees as much input as possible into the decision to figure out who’s off and who’s working. By giving them some simple criteria regarding how much coverage is needed and making sure that everyone is treated fairly I find that very often teams can figure it out on their own.
ii) Lottery. If you have a large workforce, like in a manufacturing setting, it can be as simple as drawing straws. This approach works best with higher headcounts in similar roles because people feel that the risk of working is fairly distributed. I’m not a fan of using this approach in very small companies.
iii) Seniority. This is one way to do it. The issue that you’ll have with this approach is that your more senior people tend to have more time off anyway and they always seem to have the seniority to get the days off they want.
Your junior people get the short end of the stick. If you’re not the lead cow, the view never changes. And this can fuel higher turnover in your junior ranks. And the problem never fixes itself.
iv) First Come, First Served. If you’re going to take this approach, make sure you have a published date for when you’ll start considering requests. If you don’t, you’ll be getting requests in February for the week between Christmas and New Year’s.
This does have the benefit of creating scarcity and making people plan ahead.
v) Incentive Plan. This idea is simple. Your employees who perform the best against their performance metrics get first choice. In order to take this approach you’ll need to have well thought out performance metrics for each person in your business. And you’ll need to be able to normalize performance between differing roles.
This is a creative way for everyone to get what they want, and it helps develop a work-hard-play-hard culture.
vi) No Repeats In other words, if you worked Thanksgiving last year then you won’t work it this year. If you had Christmas off last year, then you’ll be working it this year. This is a fairly simple rule that allows you to be fair and address client needs.
vii) Holiday season shifts. If you’re in a retail situation or a high-touch service situation then you may not be able to get away with having a holiday skeleton crew. One possible way to give your team some hard earned time with their families is to split the workday into shifts. Something as simple as having morning and afternoon shifts can be well received by your employees.
viii) Blackout days. They’re not just for airline travel. This is common in retail situations or credit card call center situations. And when it’s done well the issue is brought up during the hiring process so that there really aren’t any surprises.
If you need to have blackout days then full disclosure is the best and only approach. Applicants who are honest with themselves will de-select during the interview process. And you really don’t want to hire someone who has no understanding of the industry they’re getting into.
ix) Offer a holiday pay differential. In keeping with the “no surprises” theme this should be structural and it should be part of your budgeting process. Your employees should know in advance that you offer this. If you chose to do this, you may just be surprised at how many employees, and which ones, take their vacation during the summer and work through the winter holidays.
Money talks.
But how much money?
It doesn’t have to be a 50% increase. It can be as little as 10%. And remember, you’re not paying it to everyone, just the minimum number of people that you need to have on hand to service your clients.
To decide who gets the differential you may use one of the approaches outlined above.
However you decide who’s going to get which holiday off, you need to track this information. By tracking it you can tell if things start to get out of balance with your team and you can correct any inequities that start to develop.
And what about you, the Small Business Owner?
Yes, it’s okay for you to be home with your family. I’m sure your team thinks you’ve earned it. If you’ve got the team and systems in place, then take the time…
If you’re staying in town, replenish your soul.
The holiday season is about spending time with family and friends, gratitude, reflection, and rejuvenation in preparation for the coming year.
While your employees are away, walk around your company and take a few minutes to look at the photos they have at their desks and in their work spaces. Those are the people your employees care about. Those are the people they’re spending the holidays with.
Take a moment to appreciate the fact that you’ve built a business that provides incomes and opportunities for your employees to be with the ones they love during the holiday season.
To be able to give that to your employees is an accomplishment. Let it soak in. Be grateful that in a few days your employees will return refreshed and ready to take on a new year.
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