When Your Whole Team Wants To Take A Holiday Off

The holiday season is officially in full effect. From family trips to simple days off, you’re probably getting a whole gaggle of vacation requests. The only problem is, there seems to be no one left at the office except yourself! How do you handle several holiday requests without diminishing your company’s productivity?

Ask employees in advance for vacation requests: Send out an office wide email at the end of October asking for your team to hand in any holiday vacation requests and have a deadline of when those are due. This will give your team time to discuss holiday plans with their families and once collected, you will have the opportunity to lay all of those requests out on the table and scheduling accordingly.

Offer employees to trade-off: If you already have a shift system in place at the office, this shouldn’t be too big an issue for you. However, if you’re like many offices where most employees work the same hours, some pre-planning and fair trade-offs should be in order. Take note of which managers, leads, etc. will be out which weeks, and make sure they’re able to coordinate fair vacation trade-offs.

If possible, plan for a company-wide closure: In order to keep everyone on the same schedule and to allow your team time off with their families, you could just choose to close down the office for a week or so. If you have the luxury of allowing your company to be down for a period of time, it would be fair and easy to coordinate among your employees. If you can’t risk your company being down for too long, try to shorten your days during holiday time.