For managers juggling employees’ time off for their summer holidays can often turn into a scheduling nightmare. Read this article on how managers should prepare for employees’ summer holidays and reduce your stress.
How Managers Should Prepare for Employees’ Summer Holidays
1. Plan in advance
Managers need to juggle multiple requests from employees for time off. It’s best practice to ask employees to request time off as soon as possible to avoid the situation of having too many staff off at the same time.
If you do run into the situation of having more than one employee in the same team requesting time off, what do you do? You could accept the holiday requests on a first come first serve basis but this could lead to staff dissatisfaction and resentment.
Read about why it’s important to make sure your employees take all their holiday allowance.
The other option is you could use temporary staff to cover the absence. Using temporary staff is also a great option if one of your employees requests time off when you need full levels of staff. For example you might have a big project running or have a big deadline looming.
The main thing you want to avoid is having one or two employees covering for a few team members. This will leave them stressed and ineffective at their jobs. Avoid this with careful planning.
2i Recruit can provide professional and efficient temporary staff at short notice across Surrey for any length of contract. All our temporary staff are tested and vetting meaning all the admin is done for you and you know they will be of the highest standard.
Read our blog on ‘5 Advantages of Using A Recruitment Agency‘.
2. Handover
Some employees may need to carry out a handover before their absence to their line manager or a temporary worker. If the covering member of staff need to learn something new then make sure there’s enough time for training.
Make sure the employee who is taking their holiday sets up their out-of-office reply with an alternative contact or you could authorise access to their email or redirect their emails while they are away.
3. Onboarding temporary staff
Temporary staff do not need to know everything about the company so keep orientation brief and relative to their work to save time and avoid overloading them with too much information. Make the temporary worker has a clear understanding of their role and who they can turn to if they need to ask questions.
Make sure the member of staff who will be supervising the temporary staff is prepared.
4. Return to work
When your employee returns from their holiday they will need to be debriefed about what has happened while they were away. A structured handover on their first day back outlining a list of priorities and urgent matters is a great starting point.
If you found this article on ‘how managers should prepare for employees’ summer holidays’, you can read more advice and top tips for managers on our blog.
Contact 2i Recruit