Early planning is key to boosting profits and minimizing stress as you head into the final months of the year. The holidays can be both your most profitable time of the year and best opportunity to reach out to new customers. You can make the most of them by planning ahead.
1. Take Care of Things You've Been Putting Off
If you've been considering changes that would help you bring in more customers or streamline your processes, put them in place now. These might mean a website update, an improved inventory, or some extra help with marketing, involving staff on what is needed.
2. Plan Your Marketing and Promotions
Set aside time to strategically plan your holiday marketing. Use all the data you have, including what clients responded to last year, what the current trends are, and what you know about your loyal clients' needs and tastes are.
Identify the marketing channels that are most likely to give you a good return on your investment, whether this means Facebook ads, direct mail postcards, email campaigns, or traditional newspaper or radio advertising.
Include your staff as many of them would be inclined to share ideas on marketing and promotions. Your staff deal with clients on a consistent basis. During this time, your staff should be motivated to upsell and set future booking for new and returning clients.
3. Hire and Train Seasonal Casual Workers
If you'll need extra staff during the holiday rush, start the hiring and training process early.
Well-trained and qualified seasonal workers can ease the burden for full-time employees and help you deliver outstanding customer service. Without good training, seasonal employees can make life harder for your year-round staff and increase the risk that clients will have a bad experience that keeps them from coming back.
Seasonal employees also increase the risk of accidents and theft at your workplace. An early hiring process gives you the time to adequately screen applicants, and proper training helps keep the workplace safe for everyone.
4. Establish and Discuss Leave Policies
If you don't have a detailed leave policy, now is the time to implement one and communicate it to all your employees.
What Happens if There is No Leave Policy?
Without a set leave policy that is made available to employees, employers may open themselves up to certain risks. Here are a few to keep in mind:
Employee assumptions
Without a leave policy (or if employees aren’t knowledgeable about an existing leave policy), there’s a possibility that employees will start filling in the blanks. If they don’t ask about a policy or assume it doesn’t exist, both the employee and the employer can be left in a tough spot.
Employee dissatisfaction
When there’s no policy in place, it becomes harder for employers to approve or deny leave requests. If an employee is denied leave, with no policy in place, confusion and frustration are inevitable.
Grey areas
If it’s not documented and consistent, it’s easy for things to get confusing. An established leave policy protects employers and employees by setting out the expectations and guidelines for requesting, approving, and denying a request for a leave. Without one, you’re left only with a “grey area” of what’s appropriate for a leave of absence and what’s not.
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