How to avoid holiday headaches

Think of holidays and images of happy days, chilling out on a beach, or sipping mojitos by the pool spring to mind.

Back to reality, the business of planning holidays in a small organisation can be anything but relaxing.

When you work in a small team everyone plays a vital role, every single day. So when somebody’s off, it can lead to headaches.

Here at Paperstone, we try our hardest to make sure that people can take holiday when they want to; and their colleagues aren’t left drowning in extra work while they are away.

How do we manage this? Here are some of our tips.

1. Planning. Planning. Planning.

You can predict when more people are going to want time off during the year. Christmas and New Year, plus the school summer holidays. For those incredibly popular weeks, you may find you need to rotate, so everyone gets a turn.

We all know people who book all their holiday just before the annual cut off. To avoid this ‘panic booking’ we try to encourage our team to spread their holiday throughout the year.

The key to planning is flexibility. We try to be fair to each other, and between us all work out a way to keep everyone happy.

2. Visible schedules

We use a digital system to keep track of everyone’s whereabouts. You can add it as a feed to your calendar and see who’s in or out of the office.

Another option is to put up a wall planner in the kitchen, highlighting when people have holidays.

Smooth handovers

Before we go away, we take time to prepare a detailed handover. In the run up to a holiday it’s best to prioritise complex tasks, so that you can complete them, rather than leaving them for a team member.

It’s helpful to leave detailed handover notes that anyone in the business can understand. Make sure your files and notes are in order and easy to use.

Sticky notes and clear wallets can be really helpful. If you do manage to strike a balance in this tricky area, your workplace will be a happier one. And when the whole team is happy, we stay positive and work harder.

Tell us about how you manage holidays in your business – hello@paperstone.co.uk