Don’t Sleepwalk Through the Holiday Season: 4 Ways to Minimise Loss

It’s happened again! Business leaders I know have been sleepwalking into the holiday season and feeling the hit on their P&L- even to the extent of converting profits into losses in the last 2 months.

It’s NOT inevitable. Certainly, I know it can be difficult to get a decision from a client when they are away. Couple that with the collective “holding our breath” that businesses suffered from before the general election, and we have a REAL slow down (even if there are some economic green shoots).

Now, there may be issues specific to your sector that can’t be avoided. If you place teachers, for example, you have to compensate for the inevitable paralysis that hits now by having a plan to be super productive in term time.

Here’s just FOUR ways you can minimise the loss (or even turn it into a gain):

1. Manage holidays.

You won’t like this one. But if you always agree to holiday requests, you probably aren’t thinking hard enough about deliverables. More than 30% of your working person weeks lost in a month means that the whole team will be affected and scrabbling around for their own fees.

So, if there are 6 people in your team, that’s 24 person weeks per month. 30% equates to about 7 weeks taken off by anyone in the team. So if A takes off 2 weeks, then B does the same, plus C wants a week at the beginning and one at the end of the month, and D wants a week, the pressure on the remaining team members is BIG.

If you are the business leader, be prepared to be a bit unpopular. Holidays are important, but you will be a better boss if you encourage staff to take regular, shorter holidays if possible.

2. Manage demand.

If you are well-organised, you’ll have seen the dry period coming. You can consider pricing incentives for clients who can complete on an offer in the dry period, or a discount on a future placement, or an additional incentive (a charitable contribution from you goes down well in some sectors). An alternative might be a variation of payment terms, if that’s more important to your client.

At the same time, have a really robust look at your “live jobs” report. E.g. If they are perm, and there has been no action on them for 2 weeks, or no interviews for 3 weeks, you need to discuss why with the client.

Is their offering unattractive? (Back this up with data from a major job board or LI insights). Is their process too slow? Are they unclear what they are looking for? Any of these can mean considerable wasted work by your team. You need to create time for the jobs you can actually fill this month, and come back to the other clients later. Don’t be shy about having that discussion- and even telling a client that you are temporarily suspending work pending a meeting when he/she returns from holiday.

3. Manage spend.

If, for some reason, your advertising spend is the same in these months when activity is low, it suggests to me that there may be scope to rein it in. What other spending decisions can you defer without adding cost? (Note: Don’t fall into being a chronic late payer. Your suppliers will hate you and you will incur additional charges).

4. Manage data.

There is a great opportunity here to start work on specific areas of your data. After all, your investment in AI will only be as good as the database you are bolting it onto. So set a realistic target for candidate and client records to be brought up to scratch/up to date, and clean down “dead” job records with no actions in 3 months or whatever is a relevant time period for your sector.

Check that you have valid, agreed terms with current clients stored somewhere accessible and searchable.

And if you have a self-service capability, reach out to candidates asking them to update records.

Finally, you might just have time to do a ring-round or online search for back door hires.

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These are all examples of successful initiatives that Alison Humphries has put in place with Recruitment Business Leaders. If you’d like to discuss how working with an experienced, practical and up-to-date NED/Business Advisor can transform your business, get in touch today.

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