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.
