Home for the holidays? Businesses Deal with the Headache of Holiday Scheduling.

• Author: Coon, John
• Position: Business Trends

Holidays offer an annual dilemma for many businesses. Staffing requires a balancing act where managers and business owners must find a way to offer employees time off, while ensuring business operations continue to run at full speed.

A Team Effort

Scheduling time off for employees can mean different things to different industries. Some businesses are able to offer a plethora of paid holidays, while those times of year simply mean extra work time for other businesses.

In industries such as healthcare, employees understand working on a holiday simply comes with the territory. Healthcare is a 24-hour operation and employees work around the clock, 365 days per year.

"I think a lot of them understand it is part of the job," says Bruce Dent, human resources director over the rural region hospitals administered by Intermountain Healthcare. "They understood when they took the job. It's something they're not always really excited about, but they understand and they're willing to share that responsibility with others"

Intermountain Healthcare does its part to ensure a balance between holiday time off requests and fully staffing each hospital Each department manager has the latitude to set a schedule rotation that includes an appropriate skill mix. Employee experience and ability is also considered. The schedule allows employees of each department the opportunity to have their time off request considered, while simultaneously ensuring the hospital remains fully staffed and functional during the holidays.

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Each department works hard, Dent says, to create the right mix of staff at the right times so they are well equipped to handle any emergency situation that could arise. One thing hospital employees are made to understand right away is they can expect to work their share of holidays--even if they work in departments such as food services or patient registration.

"We share that information during the hiring process" Dent says. "Through the [job] posting and through the interviews, we make sure that it's clear. As part of their orientation when they come on as new members of our team, we share that information with them again."

Helping employees understand expectations and plan ahead for the holidays is an approach also taken by Ace Disposal.

The waste management company experiences some of its heaviest workloads around the holiday seasons. While drivers are given Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Years Day off, they are...