How to holiday-proof your business | 3 crucial steps
“Often, people think they need a new career when all they really need is a holiday!”
We all need some time-off to recharge our batteries. Whether you just lie on the beach for a week or two, or prefer something far more active and adventurous – holidays are incredibly important for mental health and vital for avoiding burnout.
But for so many businesses, holidays and time-off don’t cause a reduction of stress – they actually add to it!
That is because these businesses are not holiday-proof.
What is holiday-proof?
In short, holiday-proofing your business means that it doesn’t suffer in the following ways:
- the remaining staff struggle to manage their workload.
- customer service quality drops
- jobs getting missed
- angry clients/ tenants
But not only do we need to holiday-proof our businesses – but we need to business-proof our holidays!
Business-proofing your holiday is equally as important! The last thing you want is:
- having anxiety about taking a holiday because “there’s so much work to do”
- reluctance to take time-off in case things “fall apart”
- getting work-related phone calls WHILE on holiday
- returning to massive backlog of work
3 Steps: How to holiday-proof your business (and make your holiday business-proof!):
1) Make it easy for your team that can cover for each other
In an ideal world, if one of your property managers goes on holiday then you would just be able to divide their workload up between other staff.
This process sounds far more simple that it actually is for most businesses. With STAFFLINK‘s workflow platform this process is made incredibly simple.
You have complete visibility over exactly which tasks need to be done for the duration of your colleague’s holiday – there is no need to search different tech and platforms. And no chance of tasks getting missed.
Now you can share those tasks among the remaining team – based on how busy their current workload is.
2) Process map every task that needs to get done in the business
This is a huge one.
One of the telltale signs of a business that is not holiday-proof is one where the staff are doing things ‘their own way’.
Even if it something as small as where they store their notes on a client. If their colleague can’t find/understand them then they have a really awkward choice to make: do they disturb their colleague on holiday?
Or do they keep wasting their time trying to find them? Or do they potentially anger a client/tenant with incomplete info?
Process mapping eliminates this predicament – if everyone agrees and sticks to a process then suddenly your business becomes less reliant on individuals, and more reliant on a system.
Remember: systems don’t need holidays!
3) Create a learning database
Not everyone in your business has the same skill set, or experience.
What happens if someone who is ‘covering’ for a colleague on holiday – follows the process map and comes up against a task that they are unsure how to complete.
Again, they have an awkward choice – do they disturb you on holiday? Find someone else to show them (not always possible), or wait until you get back? Or proceed and potentially make a mistake?
This situation would be eliminated if they had access to a quick video of their colleague demonstrating how to complete that task.
With a software like Loom it is now easier than ever before to get someone who knows how to do something well and create a leaner course.
Not only are they creating a lesson so that their knowledge and experience are not lost – but they are actually doing the task at the same time. No time wastage.
And most importantly, no more interrupting your colleague during their well-earned poolside margaritas!
Now is the time!
Don’t put off change until things get crazy and flights are booked. Give you and your team the gift of a holiday-proof business.
