Getting Your Workforce Ready for Vacation Season

Around 25% of workers feel less productive over the months of June, July, and August but don’t worry -- your business communications system can help.  A large part of this disruption is the relatively large portion of leave taken over the summer months. To be clear, employees taking vacations is a great thing. It prevents burnout and improves productivity in the long run. It just takes a little more planning to remain productive. 

The good news is that, with a bit of forward-thinking, it isn’t difficult to shore up productivity levels over summer. Here are a few quick tips to get your workforce ready for the vacation season. 

1. Create a Time Off Calendar

Essential to maintaining productivity throughout the vacation season is knowing who’s booked time off when. This helps you plan projects around key employee availability and avoid unexpected delays, disappointed clients, and organization-wide frustration.

The best way of doing this is by creating a time off calendar so that everyone knows which team members aren’t available at any given point. 

For maximum visibility, make sure this can be accessed online. You could create a vacation calendar in Microsoft Teams or Outlook, for example. Once leave has been approved, make sure employees add their time off to the calendar so that it’s clear who’s out of the office when. 

2. Make Sure Employees Delegate Tasks Before Going on Vacation

Another way of preparing your workforce for the vacation season is to have clear procedures in place with regard to temporary handover of responsibilities during time off. 

One thing to bear in mind here: It might not be possible, with the resources you have, to cover 100% of an employee’s responsibilities while they’re away. Have your employees prioritize their handover notes into ‘must-dos and ‘nice to-dos to ensure the essentials get covered. 

You should also emphasize the importance of signposting who deals with key issues whilst those responsible aren’t in the office. This includes: 

• Setting up out-of-office emails with details of who to contact for a given issue, and when the employee is back in the office. 
• Setting up answering phone messages on desk phones, so that callers can be redirected to someone that can help. 

3. Use Your Business Communications System too!

Your business communications system is essential in maintaining productivity over the vacation period. 

Cloud PBX is a great way to streamline your communications so that both internal and external callers get routed to the correct person or department, even if their preferred contact isn’t available. With a full, searchable company directory, do-not-disturb messages, and flexible voicemail delivery it’s easy to keep key messages getting through, even in the face of employee absence. 

A cloud PBX system is also useful for managing contacts over remote devices, for example, if some of your employees need to be on call in case of emergencies. Having cell numbers or remote device details stored in your PBX can ensure that, in an urgent event, staff can be contacted regardless of where they are.

Use Net2Phone to keep your workforce on the same page across vacation season.