Managing Your Business’ Workload During The Holidays

The winter holidays offer a chance for employees and managers at your business to spend quality time with their families, decompress, and recharge their batteries. But for many businesses, December is the busiest time of year, and few can afford to shut down entirely for longer than a week. If you want to allow everyone at your company to enjoy a little time off, you’ll need a strategy to manage issues that may arise while you’re short-staffed.

Plan ahead.

If you can firm up details about the availability of your staff and co-workers well ahead of the

holiday season, you’ll be able to design your schedule with greater precision. This will help you avoid the stress of trying to fill in gaps at critical times, and allow you and your staff to set your holiday itineraries. This is especially important if you, or any of your employees or co-workers, hopes to travel.

Rotate on-call responsibility.

Work out a plan to share phone- and e-mail-answering duties, and allow for some flexibility. Draw straws or flip a coin for those occasions that are unlikely to entice many enthusiastic volunteers (like the morning of December 25, or the morning of January 1). Set up shifts, and make sure everyone is aware of when h/er shift begins and ends. To save time and energy on tasks that run across multiple shifts, the person who initiated the work should send an e-mail to the other staff describing the assignment, and what remains to be done. If you shut down your business for a few days, create answering machine messages and automated e-mails to let clients and customers know when they can expect you to return to work.

Share the load.

If there are assignments that need to get finished during the holiday season, try to divide the tasks so that no one feels overburdened. You can do this for both work-related and domestic chores—like decorating the house, cooking, and organizing for holiday parties and social events. Share and delegate!

Design an effective online contact/order form.

An online contact form, with fields that allow clients and customers to describe what they need in detail, can be a great asset during the holidays; it allows you to automate orders so that no one must respond in real time. While designing your form, keep economy of customer/client effort in mind. In other words, the form fields should provide space for essential information, with an optional field for notes. Overly wordy or complicated contact/order forms tend to dissuade prospective form-fillers, who may just prefer to wait—or take their business elsewhere.

Complete generic or non-time-sensitive tasks in advance.

Your holiday consists of precious moments, not surplus time. If your work involves weekly blog or social media posts, for example, prepare a few in advance so you can simply click “Publish” when you need to. Dedicate your spare time to completing assignments before you take a holiday, and you’ll free up additional time for family, friends, and valuable relaxation during that holiday.

Live in the moment and enjoy yourself.

If you’ve set aside a few hours for family and fun activities, don’t taint them by worrying about work. Leave your job behind and enjoy the holiday experience.

Dealing With Your Boss

There are many different names in the workplace vernacular for dealing with your boss. But, when your goal is to get the job done well and contribute to your own career advancement, there is only one thing that really matters – know how to be as effective as possible.

As business had become ever so complex over the few decades, so have the management systems and strategies behind them. In the ever-relenting battle of the business world, the need to thrive and survive has created new management sciences virtually uncharted a business generation ago. The traditional flow chart and pyramid have been redesigned, allowing for much greater flexibility but also margin for error.

In days gone by, the boss sat in the corner office nearby or, perhaps, one floor up. It was usually possible to drop in for a chat and get to know the person, as well as the position. In this age of instant global communication, it is quite possible for one's superiors to be located anywhere on the planet. Many times, the ability to interact personally is just unrealistic. How can one be sure that they are on the right track? Perhaps all the hard work is just preparing for a surprise bombshell of dismissal?

If you want to succeed, the responsibility is yours, not the boss. You need to create the conditions. Keep the lines of communication open and learn what the boss wants to hear. Don't be afraid to ask. Many times employees are afraid that the boss is only out to get them when that is far from true. Try to keep abreast of what's happening in your company. Your boss also has a boss. Find out what your boss needs and make the information available. Help develop a solid relationship based on mutual need and trust, not fear. Try to appreciate that the boss is probably busier than you so use time accordingly. When the relationship between the two of you is solid, no matter where you are, each of you can help the other achieve goals.

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