The holiday season is, for all intents and purposes, a six-week distraction for almost every adult in the country. Trips must be planned. Gifts must be purchased. Children freed from the confines of school hallways must be monitored and distracted. Anyone hosting guests must prepare their homes. It’s no wonder that productivity drops off. For business owners or team leaders, however, you have an imperative to keep people motivated and productive. So, how best can you do that?
1. Hold Fewer and Shorter Meetings
It’s pretty much an open secret these days that most meetings accomplish nothing but wasting the company’s money and employees’ time. Since it is an open secret, everyone involved in those meetings begrudges the lost time. Do everything in your power to kill any meeting that doesn’t have a clear agenda for making a crucial decision. Instead, schedule a shopping meeting or three. One hour, on the clock, where everyone can whip out their laptops and holiday shop with no family around. That will help remove one distraction from employee’s minds.
Takeaway: The fewer meetings that soak up time, the more your employees will get done.
2. Offer Flexible Scheduling
Unless you run a business where bodies must be at a certain place at a certain time every day, embrace flexible scheduling. As a general rule, employees working on flexible schedules are more focused and productive. It also gives your employees a chance to deal with holiday distractions when it’s easiest to do so. For example, it lets employees visit a store to get their spouse a gift when there’s no chance of the spouse seeing it. Anyone planning a trip can take their vehicle into the garage for a quick oil change when it’s less busy.
Takeaway: Giving your employees the option to work flexible schedules lets them deal with distractions and still prove productive.
3. No Mandatory Holiday Events
The reality is that most employees despise any kind of mandatory work event that happens during non-work hours. It may impinge on hard-won family time. It also forces some employees into finding/paying for childcare. Some companies even make the parties mandatory and then charge for tickets, which is like taxing employees for working at the company. Knowing they can leave work when they leave work will make for more productive employees when they’re on the clock.
Takeaway: Mandatory work parties are an imposition on employees, not a nice gesture.
Nothing will completely solve the problem of lost productivity around the holidays. There is simply too much going on for that. What you can do is limit the distraction factor by cutting down on meetings, allowing for some flexible scheduling, and doing away with mandatory holiday events. These will help your employees stay focused while they’re at work.
Are your employees distracted because you’re understaffed this holiday season? Timpl can help you fill those gaps and get things back on track.
