Are you the kind of small business owner who takes pride in always achieving a healthy work-life balance, or do you sometimes feel ‘chained to your desk’ – even when you’re supposed to be on holiday?
While there has been a welcome heightened emphasis on professionals’ health and wellness in recent times, some entrepreneurs can still often find themselves in the latter, rather than the former category.
In fact, according to one poll cited by The Guardian, more than three quarters (76%) of business owners and entrepreneurs skip holidays to ensure the continued smooth running of their firm.
Tips to Choose Your Next Travel Destination
This is a great shame. After all, when the right steps are taken, it’s perfectly possible for the health and wellness-conscious small business owner to ensure their company continues to be well-managed during their holiday, without them having to miss out on much-needed relaxation time.
Below are just five such steps that you might take.
- Plan ahead
This might be the tip to beat all tips in this list! Set out your holiday in your schedule in advance, and you’ll be able to plan the most important tasks around it, to minimize the amount of time you spend answering work emails or making client calls when you’re supposed to be on the beach.
- Free up your leaders to lead
Even small firms shouldn’t be critically dependent on one specific person always being in the office. As a manager, you should have already been cultivating leadership talent in your company who will be able to almost seamlessly assume your duties while you’re gone.
These should be people who possess almost as good an understanding of the intricate aspects of your business as you do, and who can handle all but the stiffest emergencies when you spend a few days or weeks away from the office.
- Have a telephone answering service in place
Even if the best preparation and planning are done, the fact remains that when you’re out of the office, that’s one less person present to potentially answer the phones. And you can’t guarantee that your other staffers won’t be too busy to take those calls, either.
A call handling service is a great solution for ‘filling the gap’. A trusted company like Planet Numbers can provide such a service to ensure calls from your customers or clients are answered by a real, live person, instead of going to voicemail – which, as all small business owners know, can be a recipe for lost sales and missed opportunities.
- Be clear with your clients that you’ll be on holiday
It’s very easy to think you can ‘get away with’ not telling your clients that you’re about to set off on an overseas break. After all, what business is it of theirs?
The problem is, clients will inevitably try to get in touch with you during your time away – or at least, they will if they have no idea they are interrupting your holiday.
It’s therefore often better in the grand scheme of things to simply be upfront with your clients, telling them that you will be on a break over a certain several-day or several-week period, and who’ll be occupying your place in the office while you’re gone. That way, the client will be able to continue receiving good service, and you’ll be able to enjoy a relaxing holiday.
- Make good use of technology
All manner of tech solutions exists these days that make managing a small business – even from an idyllic Mediterranean or Caribbean island – surprisingly easy. So, don’t neglect them.
Even just setting up out-of-office notifications on your emails, so that anyone contacting you is made aware of your holiday dates, can go a long way. As for keeping social media updated, why not look at automation tools like Hootsuite? Cloud bookkeeping systems, meanwhile, can be great for keeping yourself well-informed about what’s going on with your small business’s invoicing.
There you have it – just five ways to help to keep your firm ticking over even when you’re on holiday. If this is an issue that has often been challenging for you as a business owner, why not share your own thoughts below on some of the most effective measures you have tried for overcoming?