foundU's Holiday Season Planning Guide

Welcome to foundU’s guide to planning and preparing for the holiday season.  Getting your staff ready for the holiday period is more than just approving leave and organising rosters.  We’ve created this guide filled with actionable tips, insights and resources to help effectively plan and communicate during the festive season. 

Access the guide here.  Read on for a preview! 

 ‘Tis the season to be busy 

While some businesses slow down during the holiday period, for others it’s the time when they need more hands on deck.   

A winning seasonal recruiting strategy will have the right mix of referrals, and attractive pay backed up by an exceptional onboarding experience, infused with some long-term thinking.  We’ve covered this before. 

Fair Work also has a number of useful tools, tips and things to be aware of when hiring, including templates, and advice for small businesses. 

Stay aware, stay fair 

Get up to speed on employee rights and obligations. This is imperative for compliance and fairness. 

An important change this year that could affect your business is the new shutdown rules for awards, so be sure to be across this. 

If you have any doubts at all about workplace compliance, Fair Work has plenty of resources.  

Plan hard, holiday easy 

Every business and industry is going to have varied schedules and operational tempos during the holiday period.  There’s not just leave to think about but also things like stand downs, shutdowns and for casuals – availability. 

Encouraging staff to submit leave and update availability early helps with scheduling. You can expedite this process through bulk communications, via email, SMS, or through your roster. Use this chance to also communicate other important details about the company operations and events during the holiday period. 

Set up for success 

Plan for public holidays.  The number and scope of public holidays in Australia – whether at the national, state or regional level – can catch you unawares if you’re unprepared.   

You can make sure you are prepared by knowing your public holidays for your state and regions (and how they are managed), reviewing your payroll and entitlements, rostering staff correctly so they are paid correctly, and considering an early pay generation. 

Sharing is caring 

Share a Holiday Calendar with your team and give your managers and staff visibility of when everyone is on leave during the holiday period.    

Distribute an availability list or document of your casual staff to plan and prepare for last-minute absences and changes. 

New year, new job? 

At the start we covered holiday recruiting, but staff retention is also affected by seasonal trends, so again, it pays to have a plan. 

Here's something we prepared earlier. 

Using Employee Engagement tools can also assist in gathering employee feedback, insights, tracking areas for improvement, and putting measures in place to help retain staff. 

Bring in the big guns 

Now you’re all loaded up on tips. For those of you using foundU, there’s a heap of features and tools to apply all of this in the platform. 

Download the Holiday Season Planning Guide now and check out the right-hand column for a list of foundU feature highlights and other resources! 

We’d like to wish you all a happy and safe holiday season, and joy and success in the New Year!  Meanwhile, we continue our mission to deliver you Australia’s most powerful, reliable, and user-friendly workforce management experience. 

Want to know more about foundU? Book a Demo.