We’re right in the middle of the summer months and before the kids all get ready to go back to school and everyone gets back into full work mode, you can count on almost everyone around you taking tons of vacations.
If you’re a small business and have a small team, managing all of your business’ tasks and responsibilities can be tough without a plan in place. So how do you manage your business and keep everything flowing while everyone is on vacation?
Here are 3 tips for effectively managing and building your business while everyone is on vacation.
1. Decide Who Will Do What?
This is pretty simple, but a lot of people forget to do this and quite frankly if you’re going to continue to run effectively, you’re going to need to have a very clear understanding of who will pick up any slack if necessary. When delegating tasks, ask yourself, is it critical that I the person who normally does these things complete them? If not, identify who on the team can perform them. This also creates opportunities for people on your team to grow and develop new skills without having the responsibilities of performing them permanently.
2. Use – But Don’t Overuse – Technology
This is really a two part tip— I wouldn’t recommend that you ask someone on your team to be available during their vacation unless its an absolute emergency, but if it is an emergency, with today’s technology, you at least have the ability to reach them anywhere in the world.
The second part of this tip is that you have access to tons of technology that will allow you to automate various tasks. If the person who’s handles your social media is going to be on vacation— make sure that she schedules her posts for the week she’s away. You can also use technology to automate other tasks, like publishing blog posts, email marketing and more. Also remember to set an automatic away message to generate while you’re on vacation.
3. Don’t Judge How People Spend Their Time Off
The point of these tips is the lessen your stress and avoid feeling overwhelmed while your team goes on vacation. If you implement the first two tips, without this last one, you could still end up feeling a little overwhelmed. Especially if you see one of your team members posting on social media about laying on the beach while you’re working. Avoid judging how someone spends their time off and remember that what’s fun and relaxing for you may not be someone else’s idea of fun.
The team member who is loves volunteering at a pet shelter will be just as recharged by spending a week doing that than the employee who wants nothing more than to sit by a pool at a pricey resort. Remember, it’s not your job to judge or prioritize how people choose to spend their time off, only to make sure that work gets done while they are.
Managing vacations during the summer months (or anytime for that matter) can be tricky. But if you implement these 3 tips into balancing those tasks you’ll find that it’s not only a lot easier but it takes a lot of pressure off of you. Under no circumstances should you try to prevent your employees from taking time off— but you do need to make sure that you’re prepared to handle it if and when they do decide to go on vacation.
