Support from an HR consultant in Bury St Edmunds to help you plan for summer absences and keep your business running smoothly.
I’ve been speaking to a lot of business owners recently who are already feeling the pinch of summer holiday requests stacking up.
When you’re running a small team, even one or two people away at the same time can leave a noticeable gap. If you’ve got ten staff and two are on holiday, that’s a fifth of your workforce gone.
The real issue is that most businesses don’t realise the impact until they’re already in the middle of it.
Here’s what you can do now to stay ahead of it.
Work out where the pressure points are
Before anyone heads off for a week in the sun, take a proper look at who does what in your business. Specifically, think about which tasks or responsibilities sit with just one person.
For each team member who’s got leave booked, consider:
- Which of their tasks are time-sensitive and can’t be left until they’re back?
- What could realistically be put on hold or scaled back for a couple of weeks?
- Is there someone else in the team who could pick up the essentials?
If you find that certain work simply can’t be covered by anyone else, that’s a red flag worth addressing before the holidays start. A simple handover document or a quick walkthrough session can go a long way. Even a shared folder with key files and contacts can make the difference between things ticking along and things falling apart.
And if the gap is genuinely too wide for your existing team to bridge, it might be worth bringing in temporary cover.
Don’t forget the people holding the fort
This one gets overlooked a lot, and it’s often where problems build up quietly.
When colleagues are away, the people left behind tend to just crack on. They absorb the extra workload without complaint. But that doesn’t mean they’re fine with it, especially if it goes on for weeks without anyone acknowledging the effort.
I see this pattern regularly with my HR consultancy services in Bury St Edmunds clients: a busy summer leads to a wave of resignations in September. The people who kept everything going over the holidays feel taken for granted, and they start looking elsewhere.
There are a few straightforward things you can do to prevent that:
- Acknowledge the extra load directly. A genuine thank you goes further than you might think. It takes two minutes.
- Be clear about what can slip. If you don’t set priorities, everything gets stretched equally, and that’s how burnout happens.
- Strip back meetings and low-priority admin during peak holiday weeks. If something can wait until the full team is back, let it wait.
- Check in with your team during the busy period, not just afterwards. A quick conversation mid-week shows you’re paying attention.
Let your clients know early
If your team is going to be running at reduced capacity, your clients deserve a heads-up.
Most clients are perfectly understanding when you tell them in advance that things might take a little longer over the summer. What they won’t appreciate is finding out after a deadline has been missed or a response has been delayed with no explanation.
A short email or a quick call ahead of time can save you a lot of awkward conversations later.
Pay attention to what the summer reveals
Summer holidays have a way of exposing the cracks in how a business operates.
If one person being away causes genuine disruption, that tells you something important. It means that particular role or process is entirely dependent on a single individual. That’s a vulnerability, and it’s worth taking seriously.
Once the summer is over, look back at where the pressure was worst. Ask yourself which processes only worked because one specific person was running them. Think about where knowledge is too concentrated and needs to be spread more widely across the team.
That kind of insight is genuinely valuable for how you structure your team going forward. It helps you build resilience so that the next round of holidays, or an unexpected absence, doesn’t cause the same level of stress.
Questions worth asking yourself now
Before the summer rush hits, take a few minutes to reflect on these:
- Do you have a clear picture of which roles in your business have no backup cover at all?
- Have you spoken to your remaining team about what’s expected of them during busy periods?
- Are your clients aware of any potential changes to your usual response times over the summer?
- Could you put together a basic handover process that would work for any absence, not just holidays?
- Do you have a plan for recognising the extra effort your team puts in while colleagues are away?
We can help you get sorted before it gets hectic
If you’re looking at the diary and feeling a bit uneasy about how the next few months are going to work, we can help.
We work with business owners to identify where the risks are, put practical cover plans in place, and create simple handover structures that actually get used.
Just as importantly, we can help you think about how to look after the team members who’ll be keeping things moving while others are away. Getting that right means you’re far less likely to face a retention headache come September.
As an outsourced HR consultant in Bury St Edmunds, we’re here to have an honest conversation about what your business needs.
Get in touch if you’d like to talk it through. We’re always happy to start with a chat.
