What are you doing for Christmas, the holiday season, the silly season? Yeah, I know it’s only October ????
It doesn’t matter what you call the December holiday – we do need to talk about it….
In most situations, if a candidate starts a role in Nov or Dec their leave balance goes straight into the red or is taken as unpaid to cover the seasonal closure. That’s not going to motivate anyone to want to join before the new year.
Get ahead of your competitors
The early bird catches the worm…
Do we need to rethink our annual leave policies? After all, with more culturally diverse workforces and in some instances geographically spread teams, not everyone wants an extended break in December. What better way to encourage potential employees to join sooner and avoid the January scramble? Offer a choice or flexibility, and this could differentiate yours-elves (get it) and lock in candidates one or possibly two months earlier than your competitors.
From the candidate’s perspective, if they have no plans, it could be the perfect time to wade through all those policies, onboarding/ training material and videos with no distractions AND not eat into their precious leave entitlement…. From a business perspective, new starters are up to speed and ready to go come January.
Now, I’m not suggesting everyone should work over this period either BUT if the business can support these operating hours and a new starter is happy to take the statutory public Holidays and use their leave when they want to (and when it’s accrued), shouldn’t there be the opportunity to do so?
