Field Service Management Tips: The Why and How of Vacation Policies

When you’re responsible for field service management, vacation requests can be a going concern. Take the time to establish a policy and schedule, and your whole team (as well as their productivity) may benefit.

A good vacation will save your life. We’re not even kidding: studies show that people who skip vacations for a prolonged period of time (in this case, 5 years) are 30% more likely to suffer a heart attack than their vacation-taking co-workers. You can’t grant vacation to everyone at once, so here are a few tips for implementing a great vacation policy.

Organization: The Key to Field Service Management

One of the best operational decisions you can make is to invest in cloud-based job scheduling software. For field service management, this software collects data to help you make better, more evidence-based decisions. You can operate more efficiently while improving your ability to deliver an outstanding customer experience.

Getting a bird’s-eye view of the schedules of your jobs and your employees makes it way, way easier to tell whether you can grant vacation time without worrying about being shorthanded. It helps to know which are your busy and quiet seasons, too.

Want a free, private demo of Vonigo’s field service management software? Book a demo and we will show you how you can manage your booking, scheduling and billing on one purpose-built platform. 

Vacations Improve Relationships

A relaxed, rested member of the team is better able to respond calmly to difficult situations, and think creatively. It also affords people new perspectives on their world, and the people within it.

Not only is a relaxed, refreshed team member more pleasant to work with, they’re more pleasant to live with too. The University of Purdue states that families who vacation together are more likely to have positive relationships and better personal well-being than those who don’t vacation at all.

Make Vacation Mandatory

If you’re offering paid vacation to your employees, making your vacations mandatory is you looking out for their best interests. Taking time away from work facilitates better energy, greater creativity, and a fresh perspective on the work they are tasked with. “Fresh” being the key word here: your team will operate at its best when everyone is able to get away from the job for a little while.

To implement such a policy, you have to communicate with your team about your intentions early and often. And don’t be afraid to let them go “dark,” staying off email and phone calls for the duration of their break.

An Official Policy

Let your team know that vacations are important, and make it official. We’d recommend the following tenets:

• Let them know that you appreciate their hard work, and that their work is what makes the difference in success of the company. In an effort to make sure everyone has the energy to keep doing their good world, employees must take all their vacation time.
• Start this policy in the new calendar year to avoid scheduling jams. This is also tricky, because scheduling anything a year out is subject to huge changes. Your job scheduling software will show you trends in the levels of business for any given month. When the requests start to come in, you can make accurate judgements about how many people you will need at that time.
• If a person is not taking all of their vacation time, they may need to be reminded. Team leaders and managers have a great understanding of what team dynamics they need to preserve. They’re likely in a better situation to recognize this need than you are. You don’t have the time to manage an entire company’s worth of vacation requests, so share the responsibility with other managers on your team.

 

Schedule Their Time Off, and Take a Break Yourself

You’ll have an easier time with field service management if you keep your team fresh and limber, by empowering them to take the vacation time that they are entitled to. And remember to take a little break yourself. If your employees can benefit from a few days away from the office, you can too.

After all, the Journal of Happiness Studies has found that longer vacations (in this case, 2-weeks or longer) contribute to people feeling less tense, more happy, and better about their lives in general.

Book a free demo of Vonigo’s field service management software and we will give you a private tour of the features that make managing a service business easier. From booking, to scheduling, billing and payment, you can boost revenues and save time with the right tools.