Member Article

Prepare for the Holiday Season

With Business Link

With the holiday season fast approaching, businesses across the North East should prepare themselves for the absence of key staff over the forthcoming summer months. To help, Business Link has created an essential ten-point holiday checklist which business owners can use to ensure they are ready for the summer season.

Business Link Ten-Point Holiday Checklist

• Plan in advance - Make sure you have clear procedures in place for booking annual leave ensuring that everyone is aware of the process. Have a calendar so people can check for clashes before they submit their annual leave request.
• Remind employees how much leave they have left or ask them to check if they don’t. Don’t leave this until the end of the holiday year. If you do you’ll find that everyone is away over a very short period or some employees will feel disgruntled that they have to lose leave because they can’t take it.
• Monitor your busy months – there may be seasonal fluctuations in your workload. If so you will want to discourage employees from taking holiday at your busiest times. Communicate this well in advance.
• Balance employees’ holidays - Make sure that employees know they can’t all take their leave at the same time. Key specialisms, as well as business areas, need to be covered.
• Consider employees’ circumstances - You may operate a first-come first-served basis but also try to take account of the restraints on some employees. For example, if you have a lot of employees with children you may want to encourage other employees to take leave outside school holidays.
• Adapt your holiday ‘year’ for each employee - If you run your holiday year from 1 April you will probably find that everyone wants to use up their annual leave in March. Some businesses run their annual leave year from the date that an employee starts. While this is more complicated it can avoid the rush to book a holiday at the end of the year.
• Encourage employees to take their holiday - In the current economic climate some employees may be reluctant to take their annual leave due to worries about job security. It is a manager’s responsibility to encourage employees to use their holiday allowance.
• Decide whether employees can carry over holiday entitlement above the statutory minimum which should be taken in the leaver year. Agree a consistent policy on whether employees can carry annual leave over to the following year and if so, how many days.
• Train temporary employees – If you need to hire temporary employees to cover for absences then give due consideration to training and induction.
• Use quiet times to benefit your business – If the holiday period is a quiet time for your business, take the opportunity to do things that will help in the long term, such as reviewing your business plan, undertaking maintenance work or conducting a customer survey.

Business Link adviser, Chris Simpson says: “With school holidays and the good weather, many people will obviously want to take their time off during the summer months.

“Holiday periods are regular, definable events and businesses cannot allow themselves to miss delivery deadlines or reduce customer service because of inadequate preparation and staff scheduling. This can have a negative effect on your business, especially during the current economic climate where companies are working harder than ever with fewer staff.”

Legislation launched in April of this year guaranteed that a worker’s statutory paid holiday entitlement increased to 28 days per year for an employee working a five-day week, which takes into account the public holidays although there is no automatic entitlement to these days off.

Employers can calculate the amount of holiday an employee is entitled by visiting the Business Link website – www.businesslink.gov.uk/northeast.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BENE .