One of the problems of having a varied workforce is that everyone has distinct vacation needs — this can make time management difficult. A solution: connect employees with corporate. But there are easier ways, too.
Team’s Diversity with Vacation Emphasis Days
Keep in mind that your Jewish employees will want to request special Jewish holidays. Your Muslim employees will want to observe Eid al-Fitr and Adha. Our India coders and staff always take off Diwali and Holi off. A corporation with personnel in the UK and the U.S. may have various other vacation schedules.
Adding extra holidays company-wide is costly and part of the difficulty that businesses run into. You will want all employees to feel free to request their particular, significant days off — especially when you take into account the pressure many receive from family and friends.
As an employer, you don’t want to be the oppressor that makes vacation days impossible to take. You also don’t want to cause lost productivity from employee worry over outside pressures.
Americans may desire to celebrate Juneteenth — If you haven’t heard of this holiday, you’ll want to update your knowledge. We finally asked a few employees to list the holidays they might want, though they won’t get all of them. It has been really fun to see the diversity. Because we are in tech — we don’t have massive celebration things as a group.
However, since all these holidays have been added to our Calendar — someone on the team takes a blank sheet of paper and writes “Happy Diwali” (or whatever), and tapes it on the wall. No big deal — but it’s fun to be aware of what others are thinking about and it’s been a team-building experience.
You don’t have to offer everyone the same days off
The business demands of CEOs and executives may prevent them from offering additional vacation days — but you can offer a number of discretional days off (like a few mental health days). Make sure to include how many days notice you require before a day is taken off or that employees don’t wait until the eleventh hour.
Your number of days off can still be connected to corporate requirements — then you will be stepping on as few toes as possible. You may wish to make a yearly list of “holiday focus days” so individuals may easily take time off.
Holiday Focus Days
Holiday Focus Days are a series of days set aside each year as holidays. Many employers now offer “unlimited time off” to allow workers to plan their vacations and incur financial benefits with days off being a benefit, especially if the work is done.
Make sure all team members are aware of who is taking off, what day(s)? Use your team lead to figure out all timeframes for reporting, and who will be the contact person on the team–communicating to the one taking off.
The added cooperation and contact between team members bring team building to your employees, and they rely on each other at a higher level. This also allows people to take days off easier without interruption to projects. The added bonus is that your team begins to communicate better and understand each other better.
Change up your routine
When your team becomes proficient in the communication you can change up your routine a little. Realize that seeing the other sides to people that you work with can motivate you and push innovation on your projects. When motivations are higher — it makes it easier for persons from less-dominant cultures to make larger contributions.
When the whole team becomes aware of circumstances that raise the strain for the team member (i.e., mom will be mad if I’m not to the celebration dinner tonight) everyone can relate. I can’t stress how important this is for folks from various backgrounds whose whole professional experience has been ignored. Suddenly, your team will start working like a well-oiled machine.
Making their crucial days easier to have a vacation and get off work is huge.
How to do it:
Have “pure concentration days” when workers are urged to concentrate on serious work and avoid synchronous communication. Have “no-meeting days” when your team requests no meeting days, especially when the team is clearing projects off their plate.
Make a list of desired vacations. You or your team lead may be rather generous as long as the days you add are advantageous to the organization — and work is taken care of and on time. Watch your team lead for bias and watch yourself.
Some team members may not want to take Christmas off, so you may want to create a culturally neutral holiday program. It’s easier if you have a team lead to keep track of the days off, but if you wish to do all of that yourself — you can, per company policy just have so many days that can be taken per year and mark off days (count them) when someone is off.
Ask your workers to add days they prefer to the list — and keep it to yourself if you see Stonewall anniversary or Trans visibility day. You may also utilize the opportunity to educate yourself and your employees about upcoming holidays. It’s much easier to post a link or two to an article ahead of the cultural days you see in the list of days off you collect. And just so you don’t get caught in the cultural crossfire — be proactive instead.
Some further thoughts
You may not affect the whole firm, but you may influence your team or organization. You can’t be perfect on your efforts to help in the cultural pursuits of your team — but showing a willingness to help and learn goes a long way to effect change.
The ideal circumstance is to execute your “days off program” as part of a bigger plan to have a corporation run asynchronously. Just adding holidays would be easy — but this holiday program is deeper than that. It shows a level of concern and adaptability that will be appreciated.
It often seems like we’re in a dog-eat-dog world, even as we try to come out of the pandemic. And even if you only have one person on the team that needs these considerations — the effort will be worth the trouble.
You can affect this change in your office and team without rocking the corporate boat. Corporate notices work done and you want to crush the work that gets finished — but don’t be a part of crushing a fabulous employee who has cultural constraints they are bound to. Don’t be that boss.
Image Credit: Matheus Bertelli; Pexels; Thank you!
Deanna Ritchie
Editor-in-Chief at Calendar. Former Editor-in-Chief and writer at Startup Grind. Freelance editor at Entrepreneur.com. Deanna loves to help build startups, and guide them to discover the business value of their online content and social media marketing.