Easter holidays are known to increase psychosocial hazards and harm in the workplace. As many employees prepare for the Easter break, others find themselves overextending work hours to accommodate co-worker breaks and peak service periods. This Easter, try to avoid contributing to the workplace burnout and stress that your employees may be suffering, instead encourage them to take a break, to reset and relax.
Employees who are showing signs of psychosocial harm often exhibit behaviours that are detrimental to your business and the service received by your customers. It is in no one’s best interest to allow this to happen. Whilst the advice to ‘encourage a break’ is easily implemented for businesses that close over the Easter period, there are many industries that rely on this as a peak service and profitable period, such as Tourism and Hospitality. We understand and acknowledge this struggle and in response we have compiled a list of how to manage and prevent employee stress within this period.
Useful Strategies to Reduce the Likelihood of Psychosocial Hazards and Harm this Easter:
Encourage Employees to Book Holidays Proceeding Easter
If you are unable to afford employees leave in the Easter break due to others already being on leave or contracted leave restrictions, then encourage booking in leave after this period. The setting of an alternative future date is a necessary medium to maintain staff morale and to maintain employee motivation throughout the peak season.
Negotiate and Adjust Employee Hours
Often employees will overextend to accommodate for the holidays of others, most common when businesses are short staffed. One way to counteract this is to make roster adjustments that are flexible and meet the majority of employee requests. This must be done in response to employee negotiation, choice, and with written employee agreement.
Increase Communication and Manager/Supervisor Support
Holidays naturally reduce employee support, as most employers, managers, supervisors and full-time employees take leave. In response, mostly casual and seasonal employees are left to maintain business production, of whom have little exposure or experience within workplace operations. It would benefit businesses to implement an on-call communication stream, allowing employees to resolve issues promptly and effectively. Communications such as, Teams or What’s App would suffice.
Revisit Role Expectations and Procedures.
Lack of role clarity is common of recently hired and seasonal casuals as they have had less exposure to workplace operations. To address this, we advise that employer’s re-iterate policies and procedures surrounding what steps to follow when issues arise and implement service specific and procedure training.
Prioritise and Clarify Employee Ongoing and Paused Tasks
When majority of employees take leave and the office remains open there are always a few employees that stay on, often becoming overburdened by additional expectations and tasks. We suggest that employers discuss priority tasks and expectations for this period with these employees, so that they too have a stress-free Easter.
Reach Out to Flexible and Remote Workers
It is important that regular communication is maintained with all employees, particularly those that work flexibly and remotely as they are at an increased risk of feeling isolated. Check in with these employees before and after Easter, letting them know that they are acknowledged, supported and very much a part of a team.
Should you not be flexible surrounding employee requests for Leave, it is likely that you will only make the situation worse and you will then endure bulk absenteeism. Unfortunately, this has a domino effect and transfers the stress and psychosocial harm onto other employees.
If you are struggling this season, call the AHR Team and we can advise or assist you in implementing some of the above strategies. We are here to help businesses like yours, simplifying the HR process to ensure YOU have a stress-free Easter. Call our team today on 1800 577 515 and we will try our best to solve your workplace problems.
