Enjoy the Revelry Without Disrupting Your Operations
Parades and parties. Beads and doubloons. Eating yourself sick.
It’s Carnival season here in New Orleans, and we couldn’t be more excited. Since early January, we’ve been awash in great food, celebrations, costumes and a never-ending helping of King Cakes.
While Mardi Gras is quintessential to our way of life, it throws a wrench into normal operations, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, you can admit it. We won’t tell.
Do Any of These Ring True?
Your closing agent, Janice, shows up late because she was at a parade the night before and almost misses a scheduled closing.
Tom, your title examiner, sustains a concussion after being hit in the face with a flung trinket and has to miss a week, putting your production woefully behind.
Your admin Jeff arrives to the office wearing his float costume and clearly still feeling the effects of last night’s libations.
Now, even if you’re not a fellow resident of the Big Easy, you’ve likely experienced plenty of other event disruptions that have impacted your organization: the mysterious flu outbreak that hits the day after every Super Bowl, the curious rise of extended lunch breaks during March Madness or just juggling the staff shortages that result from overlapping vacation schedules around the holidays.
There are numerous occasions throughout the calendar that can impact employee productivity and engagement.
The Challenge with Holidays & Other Social Rituals
During these seasons, workloads can quickly become overwhelming for those left behind, leading to a loss in productivity, efficiency, and (perhaps worst of all for today’s market environment) increased errors and mistakes. This is especially exasperated when key staff members with sole knowledge of critical processes are absent, leaving remaining employees without the necessary information to execute and complete assignments.
The result? A backlog of tasks that need to be addressed, delays in processing, errors in documentation, and a decrease in customer satisfaction – all of which can put a strain on your agency's resources and reputation, as well as potentially result in financial losses.
But What About Work-Life Balance?
Of course, work-life balance is an essential component when it comes to retaining and attracting skilled employees. Companies that support a healthy integration between personal and professional life typically see less burnout or other performance-related problems. They also produce employees who are more engaged and collaborate more effectively.
That’s all well and good, but how do you balance work-life balance while still balancing the bottom line? You want to respect and value your employees’ personal lives, but you also want to ensure your business can function and execute on core duties. (And that you’re not the one stuck in the office doing the work while everyone else gets to participate in the festivities).
Simple Ways to Prepare
If you find you’re constantly battling your employees being out of the office during carnival season or other such occasions, here are a few things to consider:
Review Time Off and Attendance Policies: Now is as good a time as any to remind your staff of procedures for time off and potential consequences for being late to work or unexpectedly absent.
Create a Shared Vacation Calendar: Whether print or digital, this can help show employees which dates are unavailable due to high demand, reducing surprises and aid in planning ahead for multiple absences. Depending on the size of your organization, this could be a calendar built for individual teams or office-wide.
Cross-train Your Teams: Cross-training to give your people the skills they need to perform other roles and functions outside of their normal responsibilities can give your team the flexibility to handle fluctuations when multiple team members are out and reduce the risk of bottlenecks.
By planning ahead, you’ll be able to embrace the season and “laissez bon temps rouler!”
One Final Tip
You can always hire Generes & Associates to fill in any productivity gaps! With a combined 50+ years of experience in the title and settlement industry, we can become a direct extension of your team. Whether it’s covering steps in your transaction processing needs, filing your 1099-s forms, performing your escrow account reconciliations, or providing customized training for your settlement system software, we’re here to help.
Send us an email or give us a call at 985-641-3490 (Fair warning: You can call us on February 21… but we don’t know how much help we’ll be.)