Half Term
Do you struggle to juggle during school holidays? Do you wish you could just handover to someone else?
Do you struggle to juggle during the school holidays? Do you wish you could handover to someone else?
There's probably no need!
There are more school holidays than parents can take annual leave for.
I have been working around school holidays for 16 years now and as my youngest child is 10, life is set to revolve around the school calendar for another eight years! That probably does sound daunting if you are in the early primary school days.
There are times as a business owner where you will need to work through a school holiday and others where you will want to be completely off. Then there are the in-between times where you need to have a lower input: Business-light holidays.
It’s okay to do that!
You can make low-input time work for you with Planning , Prioritisation and Follow-up .
Holiday cover does not need to look like parachuting a replacement in for a week. Indeed, that sounds more like fire-fighting mode.
Plan
PLAN when you can be available for family and work during the holiday. Manage your customers’ expectations by giving them advance warning of what the service will look like during that time and deadlines for items requiring your attention beforehand.
Prioritise
PRIORITISE the tasks you are going to be available for. For example, have an autoresponder on enquiry emails or have “light” admin cover to monitor emails to ensure you don’t miss anything critical.
Follow-up
After the break and on resuming “normal” service, FOLLOW-UP. If you received enquiries, respond to them promptly. People need to see you do as you say you will. So, if your autoresponder said you will respond after X date, make sure that you do!
Final thoughts
My workload does not drastically increase because my clients are taking school holidays. It can’t. But by working methodically, planning, prioritising, following up – doing as I have said I will do - throughout the year, both my clients and I have been able to manage those business-light school holidays successfully.
Every client is different and the more I get to know them, the better able I am to judge if I do need to interrupt them for a response or if, with management of the customer’s expectations, it can wait until their return. That understanding comes from many weeks of working together, not parachuting in for one intense week.
