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Not only will more employees be requesting annual leave at this time of year, but the slew of summer colds going around can leave your business vulnerable to excessive staff absences.
As many a small business owner will know, being left short-staffed over the summer months can put a strain on operations with the dwindling staff numbers having to pick up the slack.
Luckily there are plenty of initiatives you can introduce to encourage staff to focus, keephealthy and even stick around the office this summer.
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Here are five ideas to get you going:
(1) Introduce summer working hours
Whether your team members are slacking off looking at holiday sites, or gazing out the window at cloudless skies, summer can be a very distracting time.
With workers up to 45 per cent more distracted during the summer months it’s worth remembering that it’s the sun theyre chasing and theyre not getting it while theyre cooped up in your office all day.
When staff start clock-watching, SMEs need to think about how they can keep everyone focused on the task at hand.
One way that business owners can achieve this is by introducing summer working hours. If your business can accommodate flexible working hours during the summer it won’t just benefit your employees, but your business, too.
Starting the day earlier and allowing staff to enjoy the afternoon sun will give everyone
something to look forward to every day, boosting their motivation whilst in the office.
Not only that, but if staff dont feel like theyre missing out on the weather during the week they may decide to bring forward or delay their annual leave dates, meaning more bums on seats during the summer months.
Continue reading on the next page for the tips to summer success.
(2) Get your staff outside
Nobody looks forward to fighting with their colleagues over the air con temperature, especially when you consider that air conditioning itself can cause headaches, dry skin, illness and fatigue.
Help your staff avoid the summer colds by encouraging them to get outside more often, and what better way to do that than by letting your employees work from home in their own gardens.
Its well known that sunshine benefits our mental and physical wellbeing, and besides your employees being happier and healthier your business gets to benefit from the fact that happy workers are 12 per cent more productive.
As being stuck indoors is a major reason staff get distracted during the summer, the option of working in the fresh air may help them feel less concerned about getting away from their day jobs, too.
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(3) Enable staff to get fit
How many people in your office say theyll start their fitness programme once the weather improves, only to resent giving up the little time they could be relaxing in the sun
Its well known that healthier staff are more productive and less likely to take sick leave; Johnson & Johnson saved approximately $250m on healthcare costs over a decade thanks to its wellness programmes, proving the initiative is worth more than just a nice gesture.
Not only that, but people who exercise on work days feel more productive, happier and suffer less stress than they do on non-gym days, giving employers a compelling reason not to make staff leave training until the weekend.
Enabling your staff to exercise during work hours can reap huge benefits for both your business and your employees and can be as simple as giving employees extra time in their lunch break or running early morning sessions.
Everyone has different fitness preferences and needs so you may need to send round a survey, but there are many ways you can support your staffs fitness without needing your own facilities on-site.
For example, you could negotiate corporate memberships with a nearby gym, or subsidise classes with local instructors, or even join the Bike to Work scheme and save up to 13.8 per cent on employer NI contributions in the process.
Finally, you could offer incentives to employees who take part in your initiatives like exclusive healthy breakfast meetings to help support your colleagues fitness efforts.
Catch the final solutions for business survival in the summer as an SME.
(4) Make sure absentees get covered
With 27 per cent of people feeling guilty about requesting holiday (half of whom do not want to put the extra burden on their colleagues), it’s no wonder that a third of office workers arent taking their entitled leave.
Considering the proposed ban on emailing during out of work hours in France, and growing concerns about people suffering from digital burnout, it’s important that staff can truly switch off when theyre away and not worry that their workload is covered.
Ensuring that everything gets taken care of when you’re short-staffed can be tricky; youll need to put a thorough handover procedure in place and make sure customers know theyll be dealing with someone different.
You can also help to support those who are taking on extra work by using tools like small business phone systems, which can let colleagues know when someone is away and enable them to get back to the calls they couldnt answer in time.
If you use cover staff in your busiest periods, a phone system can also help to provide a seamless customer experience, by providing information about the caller before they pick up the phone.
How ever you decide to ease the strain on everyone, be sympathetic and make sure the folk left behind this summer take their own leave in return.
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(5) Include conditions in your contracts
In an ideal world you would be able to get cover staff for your busy, under-staffed periods, so encouraging team members to give as much notice as possible when requesting leave would be the best case scenario.
However, if you really must put restrictions in place and hopefully this is a last resort it’s best to do this in your staff contracts.
You can do this by specifying how many people can take leave at any one time, which you may want to break down by department.
You can also limit the number of days that can be taken at any one time, or detail times of the year when the business shuts down and enforce workers to take holiday around that time the days around Christmas being the most common.
Kayleigh Conway is digital marketing executive at Receptional
