Holiday Hours Best Practices for Small Businesses

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By James O'Brien. James is a correspondent for The Boston Globe, The Consumer Chronicle, and Boston University's Research magazine.

Holidays in the air, snowflakes everywhere: it's easy to get caught up in the spirit of the season—unless you're working out the holiday schedule for your employees. Ho-ho headaches, that's a tricky task.

Sure, you could just shut up shop for a week and "take a break." But for many small businesses, the holidays are a major money-making season, especially storefront shops and other purveyors of gift-type products.

So, let's take a look at holiday hours and at some criteria for meeting the demands—getting employees the time they need with their families and friends, while keeping your operation running.

Employees and Employers: Holiday Worries

Gift-buying, kids out of school for a week or two, relatives coming to town, parties to plan (and attend)—all of these things can get in the way or normal everyday work responsibilities.

The Institute for Employment Studies, in the UK, has identified some common characteristics when it comes to how employees feel about the work-life/home-life equation. These apply more than ever around the holidays:

• Commitment Anxieties: It's easy for staff who ask for vacation time to tell themselves that their boss and coworkers will think they're less committed to their job.
   
• Sick-Day Angst: Employees are concerned about using—and typically don't want to ask for—sick days for holiday leave.
   
• Short-Notice Susceptibility: When school is on holiday break, for example, and childcare suddenly falls apart, employees who need to be at home feel like they don't look reliable.

Chances are your employees feel pulled in two directions. That doesn't make the holiday dilemma any less difficult.

Over time, shuttering a store can hurt demand. Customers tend to dislike the experience of closed doors. If your business booms during the holidays, you just can't afford to go dark for a week. On the other hand, hiring seasonal workers can critically cut into smaller companies' bottom lines.

Take caution, however: studies like the once published by the IES show that not giving employees a reasonable break around the holidays can have unintended consequences moving forward. Employees who lack reasonable vacation time tend to get sick more often, are less productive, and can be less engaged.

Strategy Time: Handling the Holiday-Hours Question

Here are some reasonable ways for businesses to give workers a family-friendly break without closing for a week or hiring heaps of expensive temporary staff:

• Annualized Hours: Instead of building your employees' schedule around hours per week, you can build it based on hours per year. Employees can then indicate in advance where their holiday time will fall, and hours can be distributed throughout the year so that blocks of time-off are created for each employee's needs. There are complications, of course: absenteeism throws off the system, and there's still going to be overlap between employees' requested hours. If you're looking to make systemic change, however, research shows that this can help solved the puzzle.
   
• Half Days: Another potential solution is to offer employees a number of half days around the holidays. Businesses can keep some coverage, but everybody gets some home-time, too.
   
• Seniority System: When it comes to full days off, you might put in place a system in which there's a pool of days available: say seven days for a staff of four. Based on seniority, your most senior employee gets to pick (perhaps) three days off. Next senior: two. The two junior staff each get one. Combine that with half-days, and your staff will probably come out feeling decently cared for. 

Of course, you could impose a schedule, if that suits your management style. Or, you can take a tip from Bizznesscard on the topic: have them draw straws. Sometimes the perception of random chance is a way for people to come away feeling like favoritism never played a role.

Remember, holiday breaks have been shown to rejuvenate your workforce. If you can't close for a few days, make sure everyone gets a day or two off—give them (and yourself) a little extra time to be merry, come the season. Happy holidays!

 

Have a fantastic New Year! Workplace Tribes will be back in January.