The holiday season often brings about many emotions and pressures that can add extra stress to you and your employees during the rush.

Managing this busy period efficiently can reduce the emotional strain on your staff and keep spirits high. Keeping the holidays as something your employees can still look forward to can be achieved through simple management tasks.

Plan ahead:

Many stresses that arise from the holiday season come from uncertain workloads, miscommunication, and a disorganised schedule. To combat this, carefully strategising a plan or calendar ahead of time can provide everyone with a clear outline to reduce miscommunication and confusion, giving you and your employees a sense of control over the situation. However, while pre-organised calendars and plans will be useful in providing a guideline of how to handle workloads, it is important to retain flexibility and be able to adjust plans as changes arise.

Manage holiday leave in advance:

Part of the reason the end of year period is extra- stressful is due to various employee holiday leave. With multiple employees wanting to go  on leave at the same time, it can be difficult to manage who gets priority and how to fill in the gaps once they are away. Ensuring that all holiday leave has been organised in advance will encourage a smooth transition into the end of year period. This can be achieved by:

• Encouraging employees to plan their schedules early and setting a deadline for leave applications.
• Being transparent about leave request prioritisation among employees.
• Set tasks for employees going on leave to ensure they tie up as many loose ends as possible. This could include writing handover instructions for other employees or providing clients with alternate contact details.
• Determine if any extra casual workers will be needed to fulfil workloads and publish job advertisements.
  
  

Schedule marketing content:

Having your marketing emails and social media posts scheduled ahead of time can help streamline operations and balance the workload during the busy period. As well as this, having content scheduled for publishing during the holidays will keep your business alive without you having to manually work during your days off.