Have you ever asked yourself one or more of the following questions:
The Yearly Malady
This yearly malady happens, when in the course of a year, you have allowed yourself and your team to fall victim to the ‘busyness syndrome’. It often sounds like and feels like, “I can’t plan for developing appropriate backup this week because everyone, including myself, is so busy!” And we postpone planning for employee development and backup till next week, next month or next quarter. And then reality sinks in and we are desperately facing vacation season. And once again, we are unprepared.
Growth and Change: The Double Whammy!
As companies are in growth acceleration mode, change is happening all around us and employee skills are changing, eroding or becoming obsolete, the old excuse of, “I didn’t get around to it” has much more dire consequences. With growth and change, lack of backup planning can have serious business implications extending far beyond your department.
It’s Time to Deal with Vacation, Back up and the ‘Busyness Challenge’
It may be late in the season, but there is still time to begin to attack this problem head on. Here are some emergency tips:
Remember, since you are in emergency mode, you may not have a perfect plan, but you have started to create the beginning elements of a departmental back-up plan. Now you can start to use this emergency plan to establish and implement a rigorous and permanent plan that should be in place for any contingency. This plan should also be used for continuous employee development which is required for human resource capacity planning and forecasting. As a manager, this should be a routine part of your management role.
It’s time to start this process now. If you postpone it again, you will only find yourself in the same situation. Only you can be the catalyst in this process. Beware of the tyranny of urgency. That’s what got you or your team to this point!
We invite you to download our eBook: "Human Asset Management Strategy: A New Approach", which provides a multifunctional guide to human capital capacity planning.
You can also schedule a complimentary assessment with our team.