The holiday season is coming up and everyone’s excited to spread cheer and enjoy time with family and friends. October to December is a period when most holidays happen, and everyone is in a relaxed mood. From Thanksgiving, Melbourne Cup Day, Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve, the last quarter of the year sure is packed with red-letter dates.
But as wonderful as the holidays are, the days leading to them can sometimes bring in a productive slump into the workplace. It’s easy to get distracted by the days we get off work, the endless preparations, the holiday rush, the traffic jams, the social meetups and other distractions. This can become a source of frustration for your team.
But that doesn’t have to be the case. As leaders in our organisation, it’s on us to keep our virtual staff productive and motivated. Here are a few tips that will help you stay productive around the holidays.
1. Create Clear Milestones
They say planning is your best way to success. This remains absolutely true even through the spontaneity and unpredictability of the holiday season. Make sure that you’re planning breaks in advance. Once those breaks are clear, build clear milestones around them.
When do you want that new product launched? How soon should you schedule out that Christmas campaign on social media? Be clear about the schedule so that people know when certain tasks must be done.
2. Focus on High-Value Projects
You can’t possibly get a lot done when people are scrambling through the holiday rush. But the reality is that you don’t have to do everything. You just have to do the things that bring you the best results. Try to make room for activities and projects that bring in the most results by eliminating the tedious projects that might not bring in the results you want.
At Outsourcing Angel, we make it a point to put the tasks that need to get done leading up to the holidays through a triage system. Tasks like client support and customer service might need urgent attention, but tasks like revamping a website or redoing a marketing brochure can wait until the holidays are over. Try to get more done by doing the urgent and important ones first.
3. Have Fun!
Rest and recreation isn’t necessarily the enemy of productivity. In fact, those holiday breaks can actually help your team recharge and realign so that they can come back to work refreshed and inspired!
So don’t forget to allow your virtual assistants to have fun during the holidays as well. Some of our virtual assistants at Outsourcing Angel, for instance, opt to do advance work on the days leading up to Christmas to get time off on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It’s great when we can give everyone time to be with family and friends. It will do them and the business a whole lot of good to spend time with family and friends and wind down, before preparing to kick off 2020 with a bang!.
End the Year with a Bang
The holidays are the close of the year, and most people want to be able to finish strong as we say goodbye to 2019 – a time we can never get back. But you don’t have to get stressed out and worry about losing precious time and opportunity in the next few months.
With a lot of preparation and the right kind of help, the holidays can be both a wonderful time for you and your business as well.
