Question

Response E-Mail or Memo: Holiday Work Schedule

As a member of the Personnel Committee, you received the following e-mail from the operations manager:

With the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays approaching, many employees will want to take extra time off. During other times of the year, people want to convert three-day weekends into four-and five-day leaves. We need to maintain staffing levels and remain open except for official holidays. Some employees have complained that supervisors allow their friends to take special time off around three-day weekends. We need to develop a fair policy. Perhaps senior people should have first choice for time off. In relation to Christmas, we might need a different system than for three-day weekends. Please come up with suggestions for a fair staffing system. Remember that certain critical staff members cannot be gone at the same time.

Your Task. In teams or individually, recommend a staffing plan for holiday periods. Explain why you think your plan will work. You may decide on the kind of business, such as a bank or other financial institution, retail store, educational institution, health services, transportation, manufacturing, or some other industry. Address your message to Operations Manager James Tedeschi.

Answer 1

Dear James,

I understand the concerns of staffing issues during the holiday season and during 3 day weekends. After discussion with the Personnel committee we have come to the below solutions to optimize the staffing levels during holidays and other 3 day weekends. Below are the recommendations.

1. Prepare a detailed leave plan policy for the employees and ascertain that the policy will need to be followed by every individual in the firm so that there will not be any bias on the leaves taken and approved.
2. For long weekends like thanksgiving or 3 day weekends, it should be a mandate that at least 80% of the staff should be working on the next working day after the holiday. Each team managers will be responsible for maintaining the 80% capacity planning in their team
3. Those who wish to avail additional leaves after a 3 day holiday should apply for the same 15 days in advance and submit cases for need to take additional leaves. The managers will plan the capacity and then approve the leaves based on the cases submitted
4. Those who have availed these additional leaves will not be eligible for further extended leaves for the next 2 months.
5. There should not be any partiality or consideration for any employees. All should be treated the same whether he/she be a senior or Junior. A high-level committee should be formed for taking up any issues or complaints raised by the employees on any grounds
6. Since the business requires critical staff at all times, the requirement should be evaluated and communicated to the managers. These employees should be provided compensation for on call, over time job requirements.
7. For extended holidays of Christmas and thanksgiving at-least 40-50% utilizations should be maintained. Employees who work on these holidays should be given perks like additional pay, double leaves etc.
8. During months high level of work loads, the employees should be asked to work extra time to complete the jobs and instead provide special leaves apart from the normal leaves during off seasons.