Best Techniques to Handle Holidays and Vacation Time

Holidays are a wonderful time to enjoy the company of family and friends. They’re also a fantastic excuse to go on that long-awaited vacation that you’ve been dreaming about or to simply take a few days off to relax and enjoy yourself. After all, you’ve worked hard all year long and have definitely earned some R&R!
As a business owner or hiring manager, however, handling vacation times over the holidays with multiple employees can be a bit taxing. You want your employees to enjoy some vacation time, too, but you don’t want to hurt your business or put undue stress on employees who are still scheduled to work. We’d like to help you alleviate the burden a bit, so we’ve compiled a few of the best techniques that will help you handle vacation requests during this time.

Prepare in Advance

The sooner you can begin preparing your business for holiday vacation time, the better. You already know that many people are going to want time off during the holidays, so if you start to plan the schedule early, employees can put in their requests in an expedient manner. It also helps workers prepare in the event they will need to work during the holidays. You can also take requests for future holiday time months before an upcoming holiday, but make sure you keep track.

Limit the Number of Requests

Some employees may attempt to take off much more time than your company can afford in terms of manpower. Therefore, you should limit the number of vacation requests that are allowed over the holidays and/or the amount of time that a single individual is permitted to take off. Then, once all requests are in and have been scheduled and coordinated, you can allow for extra days off if some time is still available.

Hire a Few Seasonal Workers to Fill the Gaps

If you want to make sure that your dedicated employees are able to take vacation time over the holidays, and if your increased volume of business warrants it, then you may want to hire a few seasonal employees to make sure that shifts are covered. This will help ensure that every person at your company who wants to take time off will be given ample opportunity to do so (as long as the requests are not excessive, of course).

Offer Higher Holiday Pay

We could all use a little extra money over the holidays and that goes for our employees as well. If your business typically sees a huge uptick in volume and profit over the holidays, then you may want to offer employees extra holiday pay for coming in. Many employees will forgo some of their vacation time over the holidays to earn extra money for buying presents and paying the bills.

Don’t Be Afraid of Seniority and Lottery

Depending on your company’s specific situation, you may want to try instituting a holiday vacation system reliant on seniority, or one that utilizes a lottery system to determine who gets vacation time and how much. In fact, mixing these two strategies may be the perfect solution. You can offer a certain amount of holiday vacation time based on seniority, and then use the remaining days as part of a lottery system.

Whether you’re hiring an employee for the holidays or for a permanent position, you should always run a comprehensive background search to ensure the safety of your employees. The experts at NationSearch are standing by to help you with criminal records, drug tests, drug history, employment verification, education verification, and more. Give us a call today and we’ll get you started right away!