Scheduled time off is essential for the well-being of both employees and businesses. It can eliminate burnout, increase overall team morale and happiness, and—essential for agencies—reignite creativity. Still, many businesses may dread the onset of summer months because of the challenges of operating for several weeks without full staff.
To make up for the shortage, companies need to implement practices and strategies to ensure the flexibility and adaptability of the remaining team. To help, 10 Forbes Agency Council members share 10 tips for dealing with the summer vacation period and maintaining productivity throughout the short-staffed months.
Members of Forbes Agency Council offer strategies for managing workflow and productivity during the short-staffed summer vacation season.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Identify Key Deadlines And Ensure Buy-In
The key to ensuring alignment from the team is to isolate all of the key deadlines and ensure that you have a clear idea of when you are going to need to schedule things. A little discussion as well with the team will allow you to know that they have buy-in and you have buy-in to all things important. – Jon James, Ignited Results
2. Develop A Rolling Allocation Chart And Consider Extra Hours
Our agency manages a rolling allocation chart to assign client hours to team members each month. When we know that one or more of our employees will be out of the office for a significant amount of time, we use the allocation chart to make the necessary adjustments. Often that means giving more hours to other team members to ensure that we are staying on top of work and deadlines. – Catherine Seeds, Ketner Group Communications
3. Create A Real-Time Vacation Calendar Clients Can Access
We have half the team off on one Friday and the other half off the next Friday over the entire year. It’s company policy, and our clients know it. The team members work nine out of 10 days and then enjoy a three-day weekend. If you provide a real-time calendar when the team is away—that the client can see—you can avoid letdowns. If the team works overtime, we have screwed up planning somehow. – John Griffin, Spiral Scout
4. Integrate Vacation Schedules With Project Management
Most companies and agencies already have a robust project management process that includes some sort of weekly status or traffic meeting. Ensure that these status reports and meetings include who is on vacation that month and use those meetings to discuss the coverage plan for the projects. This empowers the team to work together to establish a coverage plan specific to the work. – Keri Witman, Cleriti
5. Create ‘On-Call’ Schedules
Since PAN was founded, we’ve always embraced “Summer Fridays,” when employees leave at 1 p.m. to enjoy the weekend. To continue delivering exceptional service to our clients, we ensure that a member of every team is “on call” during that time to answer urgent emails. This allows a strong work-life balance to be maintained for all members of our staff while we remain diligent about customer needs. – Philip A. Nardone, PAN Communications
6. Stagger Vacations And Prepare For Transparency
Preparation is key. Manage vacations so teams aren’t taxed by members with similar expertise being out simultaneously. Use a cloud working system to add transparency to workflows and processes and help demystify a project’s progress to avoid disruption in case of absence. Remind employees that before they unplug, everyone needs to be apprised of what’s pending and who will take over responsibilities. – Carey Kirkpatrick, CKP
7. Hire Ahead Of The Need
The talent’s timing and your timing isn’t going to match. People will eventually need to recharge, so account for that in advance. The search for talent has to be happening all the time, and once you find someone amazing, hire them whether you’re in dire need or not. This approach helps mitigate vacations and any other situations when you’re short of resources. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
8. Ensure Dual And Triple Account Support
By having a dual and triple account-support methodology, time off is carefully planned to ensure there is always at least one, if not two, people familiar with an account in the office. We rotate award days off to ensure we don’t have worker burnout and encourage long weekends and extended holidays to get the most out of unused time. – Ilissa Miller, IMiller Public Relations
9. Use A Virtual Organizational Structure
Since our team is 100% virtual, our workflow is virtual too. That means that, even during vacation season, our team is happy to contribute to their responsibilities regardless of where they are. Their deadlines remain unchanged, and our team loves this structure because it gives them the freedom to travel any time they want. – Adam Guild, Placepull
10. Implement A ‘Hit By A Bus’ Strategy
This might seem morbid, but we have a “hit by a bus” strategy for vacations specifically and client work in general, because someone (besides you) should always know what’s happening with your accounts just in case—God forbid—you’re hit by a bus. It starts with information flow. Staff and clients are encouraged to communicate through group email accounts that are read by multiple account team members. – David Fouse, Pinkston Group
