So, the Scottish school holidays are officially here ..!
One small blessing is that at least the daily countdown is over… However, here we are, with most of us still working from home and now we’re in the house with the kids, every day, for seven weeks, and we don’t even have home schooling to entertain them with!
A whole new routine is required, and a new juggling act commences as we need to reorganise ourselves with different mealtimes, dropping off at family and friends, to’ing and fro’ing to summer clubs.
And all whilst trying to work without constant disruption.
However, there’s another challenge we should also consider – and it’s not just exclusive to working parents.
With the intensity of work throughout the whole pandemic, many people are reaching serious burn-out.
Usually, we’d have a two-week break in the sun to look forward to, but with holidays now being taken closer to home will our people feel the temptation to log on for the odd meeting or just have a quick check of emails?
Will they really switch off and take the time they need to re-charge and spend some quality non-work time with family and friends?
Part of the challenge is we’re all really busy, some organisations are working understaffed due to downsizing through the crisis.
And with the recruitment market being so competitive many are also struggling to recruit to back-fill leavers or indeed re-grow their teams to meet the increase in business demands.
All of this is putting pressure on existing staff and potentially making them feel guilty about leaving colleagues and projects under-resourced whilst they take a holiday.
To ensure the wellbeing of all of our employees, it’s important we properly promote that time off means time off! And that we actively encourage everyone to close their laptops and turn off work emails for the full duration of their holiday period.
Factor in thorough handovers to colleagues, divert emails as well as put on “out of office” messages to help ensure things don’t fall through the cracks. Meaning that everyone can switch off knowing everything is well covered.
Lots of us have struggled with the blurred lines of work and home of late but for at least two weeks we should all try hard to turn our houses back into (only) homes.
And for those with kids, we need to make the adjustments that allow them to really enjoy their summer holidays without fear of the evil stare for grabbing a snack whilst mum is on a Zoom call (or is that just me...?).
Simone Lockhart is group commercial director for the Taranata Group
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