How Do You Deal With The Christmas Period?

[Gemma Rowlands]

For all who hire staff, how do you plan around Christmas? Do you open for the majority of the time, or do you close down and force people to take some holidays?

Personally, we close for 8 days around Christmas and New Year, and our staff have the option of being paid for it (i.e. taking a holiday) or just having the time off, not being paid, and having their holidays at another point in the year. So I am glad that we give them this flexibility.

What about you? How do you deal with the business side of things at this time of year?

 

[Pete Brindle]

We work up to around the 20th when we have our end of term Christmas concert, and then we'll come back pretty much when the schools are back in after the new year. The first week is always a bit crazy, as none of the kids have had their instruments out over the holidays! But never mind. They soon get back into it. But as far as the staff are concerned, they get a nice Christmas break. They don't have holidays outside of school holiday time, and are paid per lesson, so there's nothing really to sort out - we all just get a nice break.

 

[Mike Turner]

We don't staff the garage, because we certainly don't have people booking in, so the only jobs we do have are callouts. We have somebody on call at all times to deal with those, which isn't great for them, but it's better being at home than being made to sit in the garage on their own over the Christmas period.

 

[Business Upside]

So, try these Christmas stress-busting approaches to ease the strain and help stress melt away.

• Limit spending
• Manage expectations
• Avoid overindulging
• Go for a walk
• Have some fun