Motivating Employees over the Silly Season

With just on six weeks to go until Christmas, we know you will already be thinking about your rosters and how to keep your employees motivated while their colleagues are off enjoying themselves. Here's what some of our members do to manage their employee expectations and increase engagement during the silly season.

Kirsty Walker, Amway

Throughout December we have 12 days of Christmas with prizes every day, challenges that link into KPI results for the day or fun activities.  This keeps our employees' spirits up and keeps driving results.  Challenges and activities include:  the best Christmas earnings, pimp my pod, or person with the best added value sales for the day etc.  We also have shared lunches, which keeps the team going over the Christmas holiday.  

It is important to keep the one-on-ones going and the team meetings, as people sometimes do tend to 'wind down' and results do drop. It's important to get Christmas rosters finalised as early as possible - we aim for mid October.  Clear communication around Christmas leave is vital, as this sets the expectation; staff can be let down and demotivated if they don't get the leave they want.  So, very clear leave guidelines are set out, for example, those that worked last Christmas will take priority over those that did not work. 

People with high leave balance will take priority over those with low leave balance. Whilst we try to accommodate all leave requests, sometimes that is not possible.  We do endeavour to still make sure that those that want time off over this period get something, if not all, of what they wanted.  Getting Christmas leave finalised earlier then gives staff the opportunity to make travel arrangements etc.  

We also change our operating hours from 14 hours (3 shifts) down to one eight hour shift.  And if we find it is quiet throughout the day, we put names into a hat and let people finish early where Service Levels allow. 

Nadene Gavigan, Yellow

 We have a team Christmas lunch with a Secret Santa very close to the business closing period.  We have a skeleton of staff on, due the two short weeks and then we do the fairs-fair scenario; so if someone has had leave the year before, they can expect to work this year. We have a competition for each pod to dress their area up and do judging and offer prizes like an hours lunch or start an hour later or finish an hour earlier.  Its quite a good time to work over this period, because our customers seem to be much more relaxed - so most of the team are pretty engaged and motivated due to the festive season anyway.

During our recruitment process, we tell every potential employee that we work through Christmas and that they should in no way expect to have leave over the Yellow® close down period - when the rest of the business is off.  We do try to give everyone a couple of days off, but this doesn’t always work out.  We ask everyone to submit a wish list and try to accommodate.  We haven’t had any issues and this has worked well to date.

Linda Crosbie, Fisher & Paykel

In my business we have a high proportion of long serving staff. We base allocation of leave on who took it the previous year at Christmas and we advise early on that they should expect their application to be declined, should other staff that are seeking the same time and not had the Christmas leave the previous years. We look closely at daily expected call volume and do par back the staffing requirements, knowing that other business factors will not impact us (ie most of our head office is on leave).

IT have a black-out period, therefore there is minimal impact on being called to meetings or testing of changes in the business. In some cases, we take into account staff that have booked overseas trips, but ask that we are given a long period of notification to assist our planning. We will accommodate where possible for mums and dads, knowing that their partner may be told they must take leave at that time. On the days where call volume may be lower than was anticipated, we look to offer quarter or half day annual and/or take the following day off. 

To keep staff motivated while their colleagues are on leave, we run fun activities, give away prizes for activity, we hold themed events, put on food - as not many places open for business close to our premises. We have a games area set up outside with volley ball etc and sun umbrella's. We get the BBQ going on some days for lunch and give staff an opportunity to be upskilled in a work activity they have not done in the past.

As we are staffed late nights prior to Christmas, for all the extended shopping hours, we have casual dress from around 14 December through to 7th January for all Contact Centre staff. We also have a group of part-time university students that work throughout the year and they are keen to get all the extra hours during semester breaks, therefore we can allocate more annual leave to other staff members.

Lyn Salele'a, Sovereign

Like Linda we also give preference to those who worked the previous Christmas and set the expectation with any new team members joining during the year that they may be required to work through Christmas. 

We also start planning around August and confirm holidays in September to allow for our team members to book flights etc. If call volumes are low during the break, we will allow team members to take turns and leave early.

We're always looking for more winning ideas, tips and techniques - so email them through to us or share them at the CCiNZ LinkedIn Group.

Christmas cheer at the Amway Contact Centre, Auckland.