It’s the most wonderful time of the year – a perfect time to use your saved vacation hours to spend quality time with loved ones.
Making memories with family during the holiday season is extremely important, which is why so many businesses allow employees to take as much time off as they can afford during December. That said, work doesn’t stop when half of the office leaves town for a week or two, so how can you ensure your business stays on top of the workflow during this time?
Prioritize
Handling projects that are most important is essential when the holidays roll around. With so many people on vacation leave, there might not be enough hours in the day to finish every project by the end of the year. Instead of burning yourself out before the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, make a list of all the projects that absolutely cannot be pushed to next year.
Remember, this way of working when days are overly busy is not procrastinating. It’s simple time management, and prioritizing assignments will ensure you complete all necessary projects with the quality standard you hold yourself to.
Consider your team members’ skills
Training people on how to do different jobs while others are away is essential, but it can also be quite time-consuming. At this time of year, when resources can be limited, you want to assign the work that needs to be finished to people who already know how to do it.
You can prepare for these types of situations by having multiple members of your team cross-trained as “backup” for when your employees call out sick or take personal/vacation time. But what can you do if you neglected to cross-train your employees this year, or if everyone who has been trained is going to be out at the same time? Make sure that the person(s) who is going to be out handles all of the most important assignments themselves and trains another member of your team before they leave for the holiday – preferably someone who has the bandwidth to take on a few extra tasks. You’ll still leave the more challenging tasks for after the new year, but at least you’ll now have someone ready to handle emergency situations if necessary.
Keep your expectations in check
The good thing about feeling short-handed around the holidays is that most other people are dealing with the same problems. Your expectations should be directly tied to the type of business you run. For example, if you own a brick-and-mortar store, you can expect to be extremely busy during the month of December, and you need to plan accordingly. If you run a business built on B2B relationships, maybe things won’t be as hectic.
Know your business. Know your customers. You may need to reject some vacation requests to make sure you have an available staff, or at least set a cut-off date for PTO submissions so you can plan accordingly.
If some of the work you’re stressing over involves online marketing, let our experts at Compusle Integrated Marketing handle holiday campaigns for you. Our team is capable of managing all of your email marketing, geofencing, and retargeting campaigns, leaving one less thing for you to allocate during the Christmas season!
For more information on what Compulse can do for you, visit us online at https://compulse.com/, or give us a call at 844-821-2154.