Managing Holidays
An article in Guardian Careers really struck a chord with us here at Cork Griffiths as we have just negotiated the first week of absences due to holidays, and it was the absence of the Managing Director Paul Griffiths that we were expecting to hit us hardest.
The week running up to Pauls holiday has been one of our busiest weeks of the year so far. Clients required visits to discuss their requirements, candidates needed interviewing prior to putting them forwards to the clients, and work still needed to be generated. Paul was left undisturbed (where possible) to complete as much as he could so that he could go away safe in the knowledge that we would manage without him but with instructions on what we could expect during his week away. We did try to prioritise our work for that week. Scheduling meetings and visits carefully, we ensured all job adverts that we were handling had been written and approved, all job boards up to date, all candidates going for interviews were happy with where they were going at what time etc, etc, etc.
So how did it go? Well, Paul reports he had a great holiday in Devon 
with contact from a passing seal in a cove but not from us back in the office (well not much). For the first time ever Paul used an auto reply system in his outlook that advised if messages were urgent to contact another member of staff (their email address was provided). There were surprisingly few respondents who did actually choose to do this. This has meant Paul has had a ‘real break’ and whilst he has come back to a large amount of emails and work he has had his batteries recharged and is ready to take it on.
Those of us who haven’t been holidaying had a good week. We didnt need, we felt, to get holiday staff in to cover, although for some sectors this may be a wise thing to do. We didnt get overly stressed by the increase in workload but there were a couple of things that we’d do differently next time. We didn’t sort our social media campaigns to automatic and we should have done. Alexandra Cain highlights the organisational lengths she went to to ensure she got her trips right – we should have done more of this. Alexandra went to lengths to disguise here away dates – an interesting tactic although i’m not sure it is one we will employ.
Hearing that a fifth of business owner have a new idea when they are on holiday means we are all waiting to hear what Pauls got to say later!!