Managing staff during the Christmas season
The Christmas season is a time of contrasts for businesses. Many in retail move into overdrive and need extra staff to cope. Others scale down until Kiwis return to work from their summer holidays in January. Whatever your circumstances, the tips below will help you to manage your staff and meet your customers’ expectations.
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Talk to your staff
Some staff members will always request time off over the Christmas and New Year period. Unless this leave is managed well, it can lead to unhappiness and gaps in both skills and productivity levels. Consider putting a Christmas roster in place to ensure that the same employees don’t always get time off at Christmas. This can help reduce feelings of unfair treatment.
Talking to staff in advance can also reduce the tension felt by those who might otherwise feel hard done by. Encourage staff to come up with suggestions to reach solutions that are fair to all staff and meet customer expectations. Their solutions can sometimes solve problems you’re struggling with.
Managing a quiet Christmas
If you shut your business down over the Christmas and New Year period, you might require all employees to take annual leave. You’re required, by law, to give your employee’s 14 days notice of when they’ll be required to take annual leave, but if they know about your plans well in advance, they have a better chance to make the most of their time off.
If you intend to repeat the closedown every year, then it makes sense to include this condition in employment agreements.
You might opt to keep the business ticking over during the late December and early January period with a skeleton staff, but this needs some planning. If certain skills are essential for your business to operate, try asking skilled and experienced staff members to stagger their holiday leave over the summer, or implement a one-year-on, next-year-off policy.
Ideally, these arrangements should be ironed out during staff consultations early in the year so employees and contractors can make plans with their families and friends. This will give you more confidence that you are being a fair employer and meeting the expectations of customers or clients.
You might want to take leave at this time too. Be sure the people you leave in charge know what their responsibilities are, and have clear guidelines. Setting tasks and deadlines for staff over Christmas helps prevent them from taking a quiet holiday in your absence. The last thing your business needs is a significant loss of productivity through lack of leadership, supervision, or sense of purpose.
However, your absence does provide a great opportunity for emerging talent within your business to take a step up. Ask the key people to keep in contact through voice mail or a brief text message. You don’t want to spoil your holiday with too much clutter from the business, so establish exactly what you do need to know and who will contact you.
Managing a busy Christmas
If the Christmas period is one of your peak trading periods, it is essential that your business is in peak condition if you hope to really reap the benefits.
This is not the time for you or key staff members to take extended annual leave, but with careful planning you may be able to build some flexibility into rosters to allow permanent staff members time to enjoy a healthy work-life balance.
The Christmas rush could require you to employ temporary staff to supplement your permanent workforce – but this can go horribly wrong if you don’t plan and prepare properly. To make this easier, you could:
- Source temporary staff with skills needed in your business.
- Hire university students or graduates, and you might find fine future permanent employees among them.
- Provide induction and ongoing training for temporary staff members. Don’t expect miracles from them without training.
- Appoint full-time staff as supervisors and mentors for temporary staff members.
- Be flexible with your work rosters – these should work to the advantage of your employees and your business.
- Avoid allocating critical roles to unskilled or temporary employees, especially ones that involve customer service or where speed and expertise are required.
The key to getting it right during the festive season is to acknowledge that it is a special time for most of your staff and your customers. Careful planning, fair negotiation and a willingness to be flexible can alleviate stress, provide a healthy workplace, and keep your business on track.
This information is provided by Business.govt.nz
