Workforce Management Featured Article
Help Your Employees Cure the Summertime Blues
Summer’s finally here. For many of us that means BBQs, beach parties, and campouts. But with 74 million children out of school, it can also mean expensive camps, guilt over too much Minecraft, and schedules so crazy that we want to tear our hair out.
For many working parents, summer vacation is no vacation at all — but as managers, there’s a lot we can do to help our parent-employees enjoy the season. Here are four things we do at Desk.com to bring the fun back into summer (and make employee lives easier all year long):
Let employees work at home when possible.
Not all job functions lend themselves to working remotely, but you can make it easier for those that do. Start by adding dial-in numbers or “go to meetings” to every schedule request so that anyone who’s working remotely is automatically accommodated. Meeting leaders can help by clarifying at the beginning of each meeting who is on the phone and who is in the room. You can also encourage employees to use tools like G-chat or Skype (News - Alert) that enable instant communication and let multiple people chat at once.
Power your business with cloud and mobile apps.
Choosing the right tools can make it easier for employees to get their work done while they’re on the move. Mobile apps are key for employees that are shuttling children to and from camps or watching them at home. Use cloud computing solutions so employees can easily access the documents they need from anywhere, and take advantage of opportunities built into many of today’s apps to automate repetitive tasks so you can free up employees to concentrate on what’s really important.
Encourage employees to bring kids to work.
Another way to help employees fight summer stress is to encourage them to bring their kids along — not just on the official bring-your-children-to-work days — but any day if they need it. You can set the tone by being welcoming to visitors, stocking some special treats (read: gummy bears) for them, or having some comfy chairs that are great for lounging. If you bring your own children to the office on occasion you can also set a precedent that makes it easy for others to follow.
Offer flex time options.
Adapting to summer camp schedules — that often change weekly — is extremely challenging for working parents. Most camps (at least in the Bay Area) don’t open until 9 and some end as early as 3. Even with the beforecare and aftercare offered by many camps (for a price) it’s hard to make it to early meetings on time or stay until late ones have finished. To enable flexible schedules you can start by concentrating meetings in the middle of the day. We all work better when we can put our full minds into it.
Flexing up the office for the summer improves both morale and productivity. So go on — get crazy! Some companies offer “summer Fridays,” in-house yoga, or afternoon ice cream. How does your company help employees keep their cool in the hot months?
Leyla leads Desk.com, salesforce.com's all-in-one customer service app for fast-growing companies. Attracting some of the leading customer-oriented brands such as Yelp (News - Alert), SnapChat, Fitbit, Bonobos, and Disqus, Desk.com has become known as the savvy customer support app that connects agents with e-mail, phone calls, and social channels. Prior to her current role, Leyla was responsible for building and growing the Salesforce AppExchange, the world’s leading business apps marketplace. In her five years managing the AppExchange team, she helped grow salesforce.com's robust and innovative partner ecosystem of startups and ISVs building and selling the next-generation of enterprise apps.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi