Festive season leave planning that works for you and your staff.
It’s that time of the year again when the one thing getting most people up and at their desks in the mornings is the countdown to the December holidays. As the global pandemic still makes its presence felt in the workplace, 2021 has been another cracker of a year paved with uncertainty.
Burnout is at an all-time high, with employers getting more engaged working hours from staff than ever before. Employees are inclined to “clock out” later when they work remotely. And with the stricter levels of lockdown throughout the past two years, many employees were reluctant to take their leave as they couldn’t go to a relaxing destination outside their provincial limits. This resulted in a build-up of leave and fatigue, as few people were taking time to sharpen the proverbial sword.
Tis’ the time for employers to relook their leave planning and use it to their advantage to keep staff motivated. And whether you’re closing shop for a while or not, we’ve got a few suggestions on making it a festive and restful time for everyone.
Be lenient
While many businesses might have strict policies on negative leave, it can be a great incentive and benefit for the business in the long run to allow overworked employees to take a few days longer than they have been allocated. Or, give “bonus” days beyond the company’s allocated leave to employees that have been burning the midnight oil too often. Find a contingency or other employees to cover for that person for one or two days and encourage them to be offline and use the time to do nothing but rest.
Incentivise skeleton staff
All businesses have core functions that have to be tended to throughout the festive season. You could split the responsibility between more than one person, if possible, to ensure that the skeleton staff also have some downtime. Also, propose bonus leave days for anyone who takes the initiative to volunteer to work.
Work around forced leave
Not everyone wants to take leave at the same time and businesses should try to accommodate this. If you’re planning to close offices between Christmas and New Year, you can strongly encourage employees to take some time off but leave room for those who want to use their days at another time of year. Plan ahead and allocate overdue admin or tasks that somehow always fall by the wayside and create a checklist to monitor the productivity of those working the holiday graveyard shift.
Get a tech helping hand
Festive season leave planning is challenging enough, so don’t further complicate it with an outdated payroll system. PaySpace is the HR partner you’ve been waiting for. It makes managing employee leave so simple, it basically runs itself.
Chat to us about setting up PaySpace for your business before the silly season.
