Tips for team leaders: How to avoid a drop in productivity during the holidays

Work performance often decreases dramatically with the onset of the holiday season. Even though there is often more work than usual, many business team managers have to deal with a slowdown in productivity of their employees during December. Here are a few tips on how to deal with this phenomenon.

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Flexible forms of working

According to Inc.com, insisting employees be punctual and work harder, combined with checking up on them all the time, might not be the best approach. Paradoxically, a good method is to give employees some degree of flexibility before and during the holidays.

Some people might work better from home than at the office. Some might use several free days for handling things that are bothering them, after which they will return to work with greater zeal. Consider whether some form of flexibility might be suitable for your team.

Moving bonuses to the new year

Christmas is traditionally a time when workers receive bonuses. In December, many employees are given bonuses based on their results from the past three or six months. Consider whether it might be worthwhile moving at least part of the bonuses to January and including assessment of the holiday period in it as well.

Setting of roles and specific tasks

In order to reach maximum work performance, it is sometimes necessary during the holidays to give more specific tasks to employees. If team members have long-term tasks to do, it might happen that they will go easy on them during the holiday season. It is therefore good to task the workers in a more specific way at this time.

Set out short-term goals for the holiday season, allocate roles, give specific tasks and ask the employees to give you reports at short intervals. By focusing on specific short-term goals, your team members might focus more on their work.

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Article source Inc.com - a U.S. magazine and web focused on starting businesses
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