It’s never too early to start planning for the holiday season.
For business owners, planning ahead is crucial to success and sanity. And when October rolls around, you know it’s time to start thinking about the holiday period.
The end of the calendar year is naturally a time to reset, recharge, and reflect on what you have achieved in the past twelve months. If you’ve set goals for the year, October and November are crunch time. Are you going to hit your targets or will they be pushed into the next one? And if the financial year is your goal-setting period, you’re more than halfway to the deadline. How’s progress?
Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s Eve, summer holidays—whatever it is you and your employees are celebrating, most people have time off in December and/or January. Companies may shut down for a week or two, or operate on a skeleton crew for a while. Whatever the situation is in your industry and your organisation, there are things to consider as December rushes towards us like a freight train.
All of that to say, you need to start your end-of-year planning NOW. Here’s how to make your holiday period easier.
Don’t forget your goals
Whether you have set your business goals for the calendar year or the financial year, now—before the silly season—is a great time to check in on how you’re doing.
- Take an audit of the projects and works in progress that are currently on your plate or your to-do list.
- Are there too many to realistically finish? Which ones can you advance or even complete without too much investment of time or money?
- How can you break your goals and projects down into manageable tasks?
Essentially, this is your reminder to put some focus on your goals before it’s too late and the EOY craziness begins.
Make the most of downtime/plan for busy periods
Taking a look at your progress will help put into focus what you can change to continue growing and improving in the next calendar year. Now is the time to identify tasks and strategies for the next year.
This is especially helpful for companies that experience a quiet period over the summer. That time can be put to good use; a chance to work ON your business and not just IN it. You can use that breathing space to have a Scorecard Assessment done and identify the areas that need work. Or better yet, have the assessment done now and start making the necessary changes and updates to documentation and processes while your client base is at the beach.
Of course, EOY may be your busy time—and if that’s you, now is the time to start making plans to get through. Can you stagger time off to ensure there is enough staff on at all times? Is there a way to incentivise taking time off in early December or late January rather than during the thick of it? In what ways are you prioritising mental health for your employees during a busy season?
Be prepared for leave and closedowns
Don’t leave it too late! It’s almost never too early to start thinking about how your organisation will run during the holiday season and how you can keep things going while balancing allowing your staff to have the time off they want and need. Here are a few questions to consider, and remember that there are no right answers—but knowing the answers will allow you to properly prepare.
- Find out which dates are public holidays. If the dates fall on a weekend, they are deferred to the next weekday (in 2022/2023, public holidays are the 26th & 27th December and 2nd & 3rd January).
- Will you be open/expect staff to work right up until the 24th of December?
- Will you close down for the period between Christmas and New Year’s? When will you re-open in January?
- If you are shutting down, how many leave days will your team be required to take? Can they take accrued leave or only available leave?
Here’s a bit of maths for you: anyone with the typical four weeks of leave per year accrues at approximately 1.67 days per month. That means that those with zero days of leave at the beginning of October will have only accrued approximately five days by the time Christmas rolls around—and a common two-week shutdown requires six days of leave once the statutory days are taken into account. This may mean that no leave can be negotiated before that time, and you may have to think about allowing leave to be taken in advance to cover the shutdown.
Employees who do have leave at the beginning of October should know that they will need to keep one unused for a six-day shutdown (taking into account the leave that will be accrued in the meantime).
Now’s the time to review leave balances, find out who does not have enough to cover any shutdowns, and plan ahead. Having this information at hand will enable you to manage leave requests from now until the end of the year.
Consider your policies for employee assistance
The end of the year is often a time when employees will ask for help. Christmas time in particular comes with added expenses and financial difficulty. It’s important to be prepared for the possibility of hardship requests or loan requests.
Knowing in advance what your policy is regarding such requests will mean that you aren’t caught off guard if they do happen. Decide on how you will communicate decisions and what the appropriate channels are for this.
If you do provide support in this area, a well-documented process will make things much smoother for all involved. Documentation might include:
- who can apply and in what circumstances,
- how to apply,
- and expectations and/or schedules for repayment.
The policy isn’t one that needs to be communicated to employees before it is needed, but having it in place means that handling such a sensitive interaction will be easier on all involved. It’s better to have a policy that’s never used than to be unprepared for a request for help.
Line up those ducks
Each organisation will have different needs when it comes to end-of-year planning. We’ve covered some of the most common concerns, but you will have unique scenarios and situations to think about and prepare for according to your industry and your individual business operations.
The most important takeaway should be as simple as the Scout motto: be prepared. As soon as spring arrives, you should be thinking about this—and although October might seem far removed from the festive season, it’s really not. If the Warehouse has Christmas decorations out, you’re already behind the game.
For a stress-free, productive holiday season and EOY period, get those ducks in a row! And if you need help achieving the goals you’ve set or want to work on your business processes to get the next year off to a great start, get in touch with the Emendas team.