What are you doing for Christmas, the holiday season, the silly season?
It doesn’t matter what you call the December holiday – we do need to talk about it…. Should a forced Christmas shutdown for staff be a thing of the past?
In most situations, if a new joiner starts a role in November or December their leave balance goes straight into the red or is unpaid to cover the seasonal closure.
That won’t motivate anyone to join your business before the new year, will it?
Get ahead of your competitors
The early bird catches the worm…or in this instance the best candidate.
Be creative, make your leave policy a key differenciator.
Do we need to rethink the annual leave policy? After all, with more culturally diverse workforces and geographically spread teams; there isn’t the same importance or significance of the Christmas holiday for some.
Furthermore, with the tough year many people have had, being able to start earning 4-5 weeks sooner is the best celebration they could hope for.
Encourage potential employees to join your company by offering a choice. Give new starters flexibility. Not forcing them to take leave could differentiate yours-elves (get it) and lock in candidates one or two months earlier than your competitors, beating the January scramble.
More productive – quicker
From the candidate’s perspective, if they have no plans, it could be the perfect time to wade through all those policies, onboarding/ training material and videos with no distractions, and not eat into their precious leave entitlement. From a business perspective, new starters are up to speed and more productive come the beginning of January.
Now, I’m not suggesting everyone should work over this period either BUT if the business can support these operating hours and a new starter is happy to take the statutory public Holidays and use their leave when they want to (and when it’s accrued), shouldn’t there be the opportunity to do so?
There is still time to recruit and have new starters join this side of the New Year. So get in touch to discuss how we can help you build your capability ready for the year ahead.
