203. Where did everyone go? How to manage your team during the summer slowdown
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Where did everybody go? That's the question that most business owners are asking around this time of year, sort of June, July, August. The project slowed down, meetings get cancelled and emails go unanswered. Are you sitting there thinking, is it me? Is it just my business? No, it's not just your business. It's summer and it catches leaders out every year because while your team is trying to juggle childcare, heatwaves and holidays, you're still trying to run a business.

But it's not July yet. It's early June. And if you're listening now, you've still got time to plan for this. Yeah, so this week we're answering eight of the biggest questions leaders ask during the summer slowdown. How do you keep people motivated? How do you keep people motivated?

how do you stay productive when everyone is away and how do you make sure your culture doesn't go on holiday too. It's not about clinging to control it's about making smart decisions now so July and August don't feel like chaos. This is Truth, Lies and Work the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. We are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist.

My name is Al, I'm a business owner. And together we help organizations build amazing workplace cultures. We'll be diving into the episode after this very short message from our sponsors. HubSpot's Inbound Event 2025 is bringing together the brightest minds in business, AI, and entrepreneurship. We're talking Amy Poehler, the genius behind ChatGPT, Dario Morode, and Sean Evans from Hot Ones, because apparently even hot sauce interviews

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Welcome back. If you are wondering why we sound a bit more echoey and we've got a different background, go back and listen to episode 201. It explains the whole reason why. And this is going to be us for summer now for the next couple of months. But we're not going to it now. We've talked enough about it on episode 201. Today we are talking about where does everyone go? It's summertime. What's going on? So every July I sit at my desk. I send out emails. No one ever replies. No one ever answers the phone. Not that anyone calls anymore.

No one ever hands the phone. These projects that can kind of stall, clients disappear, decisions get delayed. Is this just bad luck or is there something deeper going on, Leigh? No, I mean, it's not just you. It's very real. It's actually a name for it. It's the summer slowdown or the summer slump. And it's very, it's very real. Yeah.

So I think starting with the biology of it all, I actually came across a study from Harvard University that was done during a heat wave in Boston. And they found that people living in non-air conditioned buildings had slower reaction times and made more mistakes on basic cognitive tests. So just simple maths they didn't do as well. So just an eight degree temperature difference made a measurable impact on brain performance. So like,

We call it hothead. That's a hothead syndrome. Yeah. So basically, summer's actually literally slowed down our cognitive process, i.e. the way that we think. Summer is making us stupider. Stupid summer. You know your hot girl summer. Yeah. We need to have like a similar kind of like stupid worker summer or something or anyway. Maybe. But you know, that's not the only thing that summer changes. Yeah.

poor sleep is also an issue during summer. We're talking about the Northern Hemisphere at this specific time of the year, but of course this will apply in the Southern Hemisphere, November, December, January. So yeah, longer daylight hours typically disrupt our routines, especially for working parents. Trying to get the kids to bed when it's still light outside is a challenge. And I think as well, just a general sense of

of exhaustion. It's kind of this halfway point of the year. Everyone looks forward to summer. I don't know about you, Al, but I often arrive at summer not feeling quite as energetic as I thought I would.

So I think, yeah, there's a whole perfect storm of things. Energy dips, focus disappears, and even, yeah, the best performers in your business can find themselves running on empty. Yeah, so this is the team, all right? So we now know the team, which we're all a bit more stupid in the summer. But what about business, Leigh? Yeah, and this is where it gets a bit serious, actually, why it's so important for leaders to plan in advance for this. So according to recent research,

Some companies see productivity drop by as much as 20%.

over the summer months. So that's one day a week that you're basically losing. Yeah, exactly. Client engagement slows down massively. Sales cycles stretch out, take much longer, projects stall. And it's not because you're doing anything wrong, but because as she said before, your holidays, your clients are also on holiday too. And everyone's stretched thin. So it really, it really does impact the whole business ecosystem.

So I'm guessing this has got knock-on effects for everything, really. Yeah. So another study I was reading from Xero, you know, the accounting platform. I like Xero. Yeah, we like Xero. They did a study and found that UK small businesses see an average revenue dip of between 13% and 20% between June and August. Wow.

I know that's ouchy, isn't it? And that's across industries. So we're talking retail, B2B services, agencies, and basically small businesses in general will lose up to 20% of their revenue over summer. Now,

Now, this is going to be tough for small businesses because, let's be honest, small businesses, and we're talking probably up to about 250 people, lumpy cash flow as it is. And if you're suddenly getting that over summer, you've got a 20%, 30% dip in revenues, and then also projects aren't getting done, also your team are half on holiday, it sounds to me like it's kind of like a perfect storm. It could be. Like,

it could end a couple of businesses. I mean, it absolutely could, as you say, particularly those businesses that are in that early startup mode. And I think for any leader, it's going to shake your confidence to see this blip and perhaps not really understand why. You can start questioning your business model, how you're managing people, how you're managing your culture, especially if you're seeing your team lose motivation. But the reality is,

This is a cycle we see every summer. So the more we can do now to prepare for it, the less impact it's going to have on your people and your bottom line. So summer, summer, it affects our brains. It affects our productivity. It affects our revenue.

But the fact is it's June, so we've got potentially four weeks to kind of do something about it. Yeah, there's still a little bit of time to take the edge off this summer slowdown. And it isn't trying to force productivity or squeeze the absolute last bits of juice you can out of your team. It's really just about recognising the pattern and managing it in a bit of a smarter way.

Okay, so in this episode, we've put together eight big questions that people ask around this sort of summer slump. And so we'll go through each one of these and we'll get Leanne's opinion. And then if there's something applicable that I can add to it, then obviously I will add to it. Does that sound good, Leanne? Sounds good to me. So question one is how can we maintain team engagement when half the team is on holiday? So basically, I mean, this one comes up a lot, really, doesn't it? Because basically what we're saying is half the team are off. So projects aren't getting completed. Momentum is slipping.

Oh, at that point, are we in danger of people disengagingly? Not exactly. I think it's important to say that disengagement doesn't happen overnight. This would have been slowly potentially degrading. Engagement could be degrading over the last six months, even the last 12 months. So people feeling disconnected in the summer isn't because it's summer, it's just that summer exposes it. Because the thing is, what holidays do is they give people space.

They give people time to rest and reflect. And particularly with their partner, their family, their friends, that reflection often leads to quite big decision. And it's actually why August is consistently the peak month for resignations in the UK.

Was I right? Yeah. Yeah. So you're likely to see an uptick in resignation in August if your engagement hasn't been going well for the year so far. So yeah, it's all about that perspective, isn't it? You know well. You'll have anecdotal stories yourself of when you've had a break and start to reflect and then start to make big decisions in terms of work. So if engagement is...

has been low previously it's likely to have an impact in some of that you like this dot to see people leave on the flip side though because there could be businesses going well I'll just reduce the amount of time people can take off so they can't reflect and

Yeah, that doesn't really work. And also what we know is that time off is essential for engagement. When people take their proper holidays, disconnect, they come back sharper, healthier, happier and much more committed to the organisation. So simply skipping rest is

will lead to disengagement and burnout anyway. So it's not really the solution to prevent people from taking holidays. And I think we talked about on the show, didn't we, a few weeks ago about the holiday effect, how actually people do disconnect from

properly whilst they're on holiday so don't be calling them don't be emailing them then they feel a benefit for much longer once they return and those benefits include their performance and their their productivity so it's a double-edged sword really you have to let people take that time off you have to be prepared that if you haven't been investing in engagement so far in the year you might be seeing a peak in resignations in August. So now we're aware of that we're

where we know that potentially if engagement hasn't been brilliant through the year, then August is that tripping point. No, what do I mean? Tipping. Tipping point is exactly right. No R in there. Is that tipping point. So is there anything from a psychological point of view, is there anything that we can be doing as leaders to sort of mitigate against that or stop that from happening? It's going to be really hard if you haven't been investing in engagement already, but probably the best thing you can do is give people clarity because people will, your team will also be aware of the summer events

or the summer slowdown or the impact summer has. So I think really being upfront about the priorities of what the business is and where people's efforts are needed over summer is going to be really helpful and reduce some of that anticipation

I never know that has to anticipatory. Anticipatory. That sounds fancy. Anticipatory. Anticipatory. Let's go for anticipatory. Anticipatory and gassy. That's what I'm telling you. So yeah, the anxious because you can see the pain coming. Second, as I said, encourage time off. Don't just approve it. Promote it because it's one of the strongest things you can do to show as a business owner you're investing in people's well-being, your business.

You're prioritizing that rest and recovery time. And as we've seen from lots of studies recently, it's not about the kind of financial reward and perks that are really keeping employees sticking around. It is an understanding that their employer is invested in their own well-being. So definitely make sure that people are taking their holidays regularly.

And I think finally, recognise the effort for any of those who are going to be picking up the extra work, potentially whilst others are away. Again, acknowledging that up front, but also a simple thank you when they're covering perhaps for a colleague.

I think summer doesn't have to be a threat to an engagement, but it will potentially mirror where your engagement is currently at. So if you start to see a bit of infighting, if you start to see resignations or people taking time off sick, then it's probably a really good indicator that your team is disengaged and that needs to be a priority come the autumn. Okay.

Okay, that makes perfect sense. And I think also just most people know this. When you take some time off, you go on holiday. If you're enjoying your work beforehand, but you might be slightly burnt out, oftentimes when you go on holiday, you're sitting there, you're having by the pool or whatever, and you're

you feel like you renew your excitement for it because you've sort of just given yourself a little bit of a break. But talking of burnout, I think what we're saying here is that it's cool for those people who are sitting by a pool somewhere hot, but all the people who are left behind in the office are kind of picking up the slack. Now, we know it's going to be their time soon, but still, is that not a risk of burning out the people who are left? Massive risk. Absolutely massive risk.

And this is really rooted in old school occupational psychology. It's called the job demands resources model, which is really quite intuitive. It basically says that when demands outweigh resources, people burn out, which is, you know, kind of makes sense. So if people are covering the extra work, if they're having to respond to more emails or they're picking up extra clients to look after or they're making decisions they wouldn't normally have to when

when those demands spike, but you're not providing the people any extra resource in terms of time, support, autonomy, or even training, then yes, burnout will become more likely. I know we've covered burnout a lot on this, but this is kind of like, sounds like a little sort of micro burnout. So what signs should we as leaders or business owners be looking for to know that the people left behind might be getting to the edge of what they can cope with? I think people tend to...

associate burnout first of all with exhaustion and you might not necessarily see that initially if it does show up it might be somebody not looking as put together as they normally are looking particularly tired potentially being late

I think more than likely you're going to see cynicism, you're going to see resentment, you're going to see pushback when you ask them to do something, huffing, puffing, eye rolling and potential detachment as well from work. So maybe people aren't as keen to organise the team lunch or stay after work or even volunteer for certain things within the business they normally would have. That's probably a sign that these people are starting to burn out.

So I think the key question here has got to be, what can we do? Because this sounds a little bit depressing to me because I'm like, I don't know what I can do apart from not let people go on holiday or just expect or accept that things are going to be, you know, levels are going to be dropping. Is there anything we can actually do as leaders? There's loads that we can do. And this is a really good example of how we often forget that people and culture is also really closely linked to systems and processes and operations. So this is actually really practical

in terms of how you can manage it and really simple things like proper handovers. Like, you know, you actually set aside time in the diary before that person goes on holiday.

to hand over anything that they're working on, hand over any projects, know who they're handing over to and what needs to be picked up. And then with that, hand backs when they return. They're not having to trawl through 300 emails to get up to date. That should be the first thing that that person does on their first day back. It doesn't need to be particularly long. A 30-minute meeting is probably going to be enough to catch somebody up.

What works particularly well with that is if you have a buddy system. And it can be tricky to coordinate because you don't necessarily want to have a rule of, oh, if John's off, then Sarah can't be. But if you have a buddy system in terms of roles, then it typically works.

goes a bit easier because somebody will be so appreciative of a really good handover to them and likewise the person coming back with that hand back, they'll want to do the same for that person in return when they're away. It breathes this kind of civility and respect in the workplace which is really, really helpful. One thing I think is super important is to decide what your organisational policy is going to be around emails.

because there's nothing worse than coming back from holiday and feeling like you've got two weeks work to catch up on and you've got a thousand emails to go through one of the most brilliant out of offices I've ever seen and I think it was maybe from somebody it it fairly I want to say Metro Bank I think it might be one of the colleagues that we know at Metro Bank and it says something like

this email isn't monitored. This email inbox isn't monitored. I'm on holiday. This email will be deleted in 24 hours. If it's urgent, email this person. Ooh, I like that. Yeah. So it's like, I'm not coming back to any emails at all. And I thought that was a really smart way of kind of going, right, it's not just about

who's going to monitor it and kind of put stuff on hold it's going to be who's actually going to deal with any situational query that is escalated the point we're going to have to get in touch with somebody else um i thought that was really smart because you know that probably 90% of those people will never forward on that email again they'll just make a note to get back in touch when they're when they're back and i think the final thing as well is just looking at any

Anything that can be trimmed within the organization, meetings, you know, can you just reduce number of meetings that you have over summer? Reporting, if people are spending ages on reporting, can that be reduced? And particularly now with AIs or anything you can replace in terms of that automation. So I think looking at internal process as well and actually where people are spending their time can be a really helpful way to just kind of reduce that workload during these disruptive few months.

Yeah, and I think AI is particularly good at taking a load of information and boiling it down to the important stuff. If you've got Google Workspace, then I think Gemini is now included in it and it can actually start to respond to your email. I saw something this morning actually on X, a guy who'd created an entire workflow, a genetic workflow for his email. And essentially what it does is

every incoming email, then it will put it into, does it need a response or not? If it needs a response, it'll draft a response and then send a Slack message to this person saying, right, these are in your drafts box to go and review that. And then if it needs a meeting, then it'll send the scheduling link. But the prompts are something like, meetings are very rarely required.

And so this guy had essentially just automated the entire inbox. Now, what about, Leigh, what about, so someone's away for two weeks and they're on a project. The temptation is during those two weeks to CC someone in on emails. I'm sensing that's not a great idea. No, and this is where that hand over and hand back is so important.

Like I'm not everything that's going to be covered in those two meetings, those two conversations, everything you need to know about before I go and everything I need to know about when I come back. So you don't need the CC'd in emails. If something's particularly important in terms of having that audit trail, then maybe you'd request that certain emails get sent to you or that you control that. I would like to be CC'd into any email from this person.

But really, if the team is working well and that handover is in place, it's not really necessary for you to be CC'd in everything that happens.

Yeah, and if you're a smaller business and you have control over what applications you can use, then something like Basecamp is a really, really good application because not only does it allow you to have a little sort of catch-up thing, so it'll tell you what you've missed, but also it's just going to, like, we have a friend whose sort of tagline is anything but email, so do not send me an email unless you absolutely have to. And like you said, there doesn't seem anything more depressing than coming back to work and looking and seeing you've got 1,000 emails

emails in your inbox yeah and that's why a lot of employees are reluctant to take time off and why a lot of employees particularly in small businesses are in in startup or scale up mode very few employees will take their full holiday allowance which is really bad for our well-being and rest and recovery time anyway um

And I think the final thing I'd say on this is that leaders, it's really important that you model these behaviours too. Remember, holidays are only impactful if we actually properly disconnect from work. That means that if you are on holiday, senior leader, you are not checking your email. You're not replying to an email. You're not just calling the office to see if everything's OK. You are online.

offline because then that shows that that is the expectation of when you have time offers that you are able to and have permission to fully disconnect. Okay, so the third question that comes up a lot is how do leaders and managers and business owners deal with people with kids? Now, obviously, we don't have kids very happily.

kid free but my sister and my brother and your sister and brother do yeah so if you've got kids you're kind of juggling childcare it's probably more expensive time for you because the kids are off school but you're not there's lots of stuff to think about so is there kind of something which a leader or manager can do to

to help people who have got kids? And the second question I've got, which I'll ask you later on, is are we giving them a special treatment if they've got kids compared to if they're not? But we'll come back to that in a second. I think, first of all, it is understanding, particularly if you're a business owner or a leader who doesn't have children, is having some empathy that summer is one of the hardest times of the year for parents and carers because you're trying to do your job, you're trying to organise childcare, you're trying to plan activities and cover the additional costs that your kid's

being off bring and then also you're trying to be emotionally available and stable for those children all the time as well so it's a lot as a mental load it's really quite really quite massive so I think for any leader it's first of all empathizing that the parents would probably prefer their kids to be in school too. To a certain extent it's not just a question of actually doing all the stuff you've kind of

You kind of got all these questions and problems and concerns in your head already, like are the kids are in childcare? Are they OK because they're not at school? Yeah, exactly. It's what I mentioned about the mental load. It does go up when you've got these demanding priorities and more than one aspect of your life at once. And when it builds up without that support, then it will turn into stress. And as we know, prolonged stress results in burnout.

What I think is good news for an organisation is there's so much opportunity here to do better. I was reading an article by Mind and was interviewing Kooth, who I think we've had somebody on the podcast before from Kooth. Yes, we have, I think. A platform that kind of offers support around this type of coordination of people and workforce. And it says something like, in the research they've done, half of working parents don't feel their workplace supports their needs anymore.

And only one in four, oh sorry, and one in four have taken time off due to poor mental health as a result of this lack of support. Yeah, so it's really kind of a call to action, I think, for business owners to step up and kind of think how can we support our parents and carers during this period.

So talking supporting, give us some practical steps. Give us something which leaders and owners and managers can actually do. Flexibility. And that is going back to your earlier question in terms of are we giving people preferential treatment? No, because you should be offering everybody these things. It just happens that at certain times of year, it's going to be more relevant to certain people, certain demographics in your workplace than others. So caregiving.

Can start times be adjusted? You know, can someone start a bit later and finish a bit later or split their working day? Remote working could be really helpful. It could be the exact opposite. It could be actually much more beneficial for the parent to come into the office on their work days, right?

Permission to step away for 20 minutes if something's going on with the children or something needs to be coordinated or handed over. And I think as well, it's understanding that it's not about

a massive policy change. It's as you said before, it's about trust. It's about making sure that people are still clear about what they have to deliver, what the expectations are and giving people the autonomy and flexibility within their working day to, to manage that through. Yeah. And I think as non-parents, like we, we don't really work in a conventional office, but I'd imagine that if you weren't a parent, then you feel probably quite resentful if you're taking on the work of someone because they've got kids. And it's like, you know, it's, it,

It just doesn't seem that fair. No, it doesn't, which is why it's so important that all of these policies are organisation-wide. It's so important we have those handovers and handbacks of what is happening with email so it's not one person actually picking up the work. This is all so much of an operational problem as it is a cultural problem. It's understanding that workflow and making sure that the same people aren't always picking up

Yeah.

It could be if somebody has a family member who is unwell or their pet needs to go to the vet or, you know, there's a whole host of reasons why people will need this flexibility and will benefit from a really robust operational process around annual leave. This is going to benefit everybody if it's applied to everybody and it's an organisational-wide policy. So, yeah, I think that's the thing. And I think finally with that,

with with any issue around um you know individuals within the workplaces what resources can you offer as an organization in terms of signposting what do you know about children's clubs that are happening what do you know about reduced child care or child care vouchers that type of thing um there's lots of different resources that you can use koth is one of them that that we mentioned um

So, yeah, I think it's really looking at all your EAP program, for example, actually what practical support could be in place for parents as well. And of course, training managers. So they're having these conversations ahead of time to understand what individual needs somebody is going to need moving into summer.

Okay, some really good tips there. Question number four I've got here is, what strategies can we implement to prevent project delays during summer? Now, this is one which I think gets a lot of people because the work doesn't stop, but people do. And you're left wondering, like, is this project going to get finished at all? Are we going to let some people down? Are we going to get in trouble with our clients?

So what is it we can do to ensure projects stay on track? Or is there anything we can do? There's loads we can do. And again, this is all about operations. I think, you know what, I almost think that this period in terms of annual leave or annual leave in general over the whole year should be project managed by somebody. Because if you think about all of the different...

combinations of people being off that might cause a challenge you don't want to know the three people who know about this one thing to all be off at the same time or three people look after a particular client or region at the same time um

I actually think this is a project in itself for somebody in HR or somebody in ops who's going to lead this and make sure everything's happening, that lead requests are getting processed quickly and fairly, not to the detriment of any one person picking up extra work and that these handovers and handbacks are really happening. So I think first of all is actually look for somebody in your organization who can project manage annual leave because I think that would be a really helpful thing for you to do because you're not going to get caught off guard because you're going to

plan and prepare for it in

in advance and just a little aside to that i'm guessing that um that ai or chat gpt or claude or someone that would be perfect project for them to just input all the people what they're responsible for in a spreadsheet and say right make sure they don't overlap yeah absolutely absolutely that aside in terms of individual projects it's things that you should be building in any way is contingency plans you know if somebody goes off sick or breaks a leg or suddenly leaves a business um it's no different really so i think the key things are uh

in terms of the actual project management side of it, if you've got key deadlines, try and get them in before that six week rush, that mid-July to the end of August, because it's not just your team that's going to have people off, it's going to be other businesses and your clients as well. So I'd say if there's anything that's like a really important deadline, aim to get it done before this six week period or agree that it can be completed in mid-September, whatever that project is.

So you've got that cushion. Again, I think it's, you know, it's creating that handover process for each project, which will be part of the bigger handover for the individual. But in terms of what's done, what's next, what can wait, who's covering what, you know,

So, you know, if there are any red flags there and any gaps. And again, it's those handbacks with that. They're going to be really important. I think finally, what can be really effective, but I appreciate you're a bit short on time now, but something to think about and start investing is start to cross train. So if you've got critical tasks or critical things in your business that need to be done, make sure everybody's able to do it.

for example, the simplest client onboarding, you know, that was, that was a job of, of, um, of the team that was kind of two below me, um, in one of my roles, but I was trained on how to onboard. My managers were trained on how to onboard our admin staff, where our engagement partners were, everyone was trained on that because it's one of the most important aspects of, of the contract to keep performance moving. So there are any key things that,

could really damage the momentum or revenue of your business make sure people are cross-trained and I think if you've got somebody project managing all of this as well then there's going to be priorities in place there's not going to be panic there's not going to be a shock surprises there's not going to be any kind of Monday morning we go oh my gosh I can't believe that that Joe and Amanda are off for

at the same time for two weeks who's going to look after this client that's just not going to happen okay so there's the first four questions we've got four questions coming after the break don't go anywhere

Listen to Billion Dollar Moves wherever you get your podcasts.

So welcome back. We are talking about the eight major questions that people have around the summer slump, I think is what we've called it. So question number five is how do we address the mental load that some employees may be experiencing? So I think what we're saying is that if you've got half your staff away, then essentially the remaining people

are juggling more than just their job description they're juggling all the other stuff plus in their head they've still got oh my god right Derek's away so we need to make sure x happens and who's going to do that yeah and the key to this is making sure you're not missing any of the invisible stuff and this is where training your managers and having these regular regular check-ins is so important there might be an assumption that if somebody doesn't have children summer is going to be business as usual for them that's not to say they've not got lots of other things happening you

you know, outside of work. You know, it could be anything that's happening just as it can at any point of the year. It just happens to fall and summer. So I think making sure that you know what's going on behind the scenes of people who work for you in terms of

you know, any of the responsibilities that they might be dealing with because it's that cumulative strain that's going to add up. And then something for your parents as well, you know, what other challenges are they battling? One that's getting increasingly common actually, particularly with the kind of Gen X older millennials, is that sandwich generation where you're caring for an elder parent and you've got

for young children. That's called a sandwich generation. I think it's called a sandwich generation. I like that. Unless I misunderstood that. No, that's... But yeah, it's the people in the middle, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. So there's lots of different caring responsibilities going on. So I think, again, it's just really making sure that you're having those check-ins so you're not just kind of seeing...

dips in performance or low motivation is a sign of that they're just not that interested in the job anymore it might be they're dealing with lots of different things and because of this summer period it's going to be a lot more pressured.

Now, I know you and I'm guessing you'll have done some reading around this. So go on, hit us. What's the research say? Again, it's quite intuitive. You know, employees that are carrying this high cognitive load, so lots of competing priorities in work and life, um,

They're twice as likely to support symptoms of burnout. It's as simple as that. It's not really a surprise, but what the research has found that working parents in particular can struggle. I think there was actually people in the study that I read, the qualitative study, they gather feedback that

um that parents basically said it's like a permanent sense of anxiety because there's so much to be so much to be juggling so with that as well people do potentially you know might might pull back might start to disconnect from from people at work might start to make more mistakes it's just being mindful um that people might be trapped in the cycle of pressure and guilt um and they really need that support to help manage their priorities in time during that period

Cool. So strategies for dealing with this, what can we do?

Talk to your people. It's really not more difficult than that. It's making sure that people feel seen, people feel heard, people feel understood. And again, this is everybody in the organization, but you're going to have an idea at this point in time, who are the people to prioritize in terms of those conversations. And everything we've said previously in terms of automating processes where you can having those handovers, rotating responsibilities, you know, these

shared documents in terms of planning as you said Basecamp are having the platforms in place it's really just making sure that you're being very transparent about it with your people we understand this is a tricky time of year for some people we're having those check-ins with everyone to make sure they're okay and that we can do and then we're actually putting putting together some operational process in place as well to make this period work more smoothly.

Yeah. And I suppose no matter where you are in the year, there's, there's, you've always got this mental load, this kind of like, you've got stuck, you ever wake up and you're just like, oh my God, there's so much to do today. And then you start to do one thing, you start thinking about something else, something else. Um, I personally find that, um, I use Claude quite a lot and I'll very often just open a thread with Claude and just talk to him.

him. I'm sure it's a him. That's my, that's my thoughts. Anyway, I just talk to them and get it all out of my head. All the stuff I'm stressing about, maybe when I'm out with the dogs or perhaps having a cup of coffee in the morning. And then I go, right, okay, can you list out all the things I've told you and help me to prioritize those? And even just the, just the fact of just talking and getting it out a little bit. Sort of, I fear, I find it takes a little bit of a mind off. The other thing which I do, which I think people must think I'm a little bit crazy is

is quite often I'll put my AirPods in and then I'll go out for a walk with the dog and I'll just chat.

I'm not chatting to anyone. I'm just chatting to myself. But just by talking out loud, again, that really, really helps me. And that's possibly because I'm a bit more of an extrovert. So I tend to say things out loud and then start thinking about them, as opposed to Leanne, who tends to think about them and then say them out loud. But all this is just helping to sort of just lighten that mental load a little bit. Yeah, that's a really good tip, Al, for an individual who's feeling a bit overwhelmed. Introverts, you might prefer to write it down if you don't want to speak it out loud.

Okay, so question number six. Can we leverage the quieter summer period for strategic planning? Now, this I really like. Funnily enough, we've been doing this over the last couple of days. So coming up for June, July, August, we tend to... I think we go down to one episode a week in August, don't we, Leigh? We did last year. And we might do again this year because we want to...

We just literally want to have a little bit more time off over summer. But we have found this time of year, sitting down and working out what we want to do, we have such a, oh God, I almost can't say this. We call it the North Star metric. And every, I've become a corporate knobhead, haven't I? Every quarter we'll have a North Star metric. And sometimes they'll be the same one, but they'll be like, okay, this quarter, whatever you're writing, talking about, whatever you're doing, what is the metric we're working towards?

And we found that summer, it was really easy to talk about yesterday. We sat down for an afternoon, chatted about it, came up with our North Star. And then we were like, okay, right. We know what we're doing for summer. So if all we do is just that and hit that North Star, that's great. Anyway, I'm waffling a little bit. Strategic planning. Is this the time to do it? Or are we just actually just pretending that we're doing busy work because not everyone's here? I think it is potentially a time to do it. I think that...

It provides a really important temporal landmark, that midpoint of the year, when you're kind of at that, particularly in June, where we're like, we're looking back six months, we're looking forward six months. It provides a good natural time to reflect, just as typically spring and autumn tend to be different.

much more about planning and creating new habits and changes, summer is a really good opportunity to reflect and as you say, refine the direction of the business, the strategy of the business.

I think what's really interesting about what you said, Al, is about understanding what your targets are for this period. It might be that you need to reduce some targets. It might be that there's others that you can increase. But it's kind of, again, that transparency of what people need to deliver. There has actually been some research on this, which I thought was quite interesting. That if you do have a period of reduced reactive workloads, the things that have to be very immediate, right?

which might come in summer because you may be dialing down certain clients or other clients are away as well. So there's not as much crisis happening that actually people can feel more psychologically safe and introspective to undertake that type of strategy type work. So it won't be right for every organisation, depending on what it looks like for you over summer. But if it is a bit quieter, then it could actually be a really good time to look at strategy, look at what you've achieved so far and look at what your goals are for the rest of the year.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think from a business owner's point of view, it's a really good time just to sit down and start thinking about just literally reflective thinking. So book an entire afternoon off, go somewhere else outside the office. If you can go and just, I mean, I don't want to say the word journal because I think that's way overused, but yeah.

But if you can start writing down things, you can ask sort of three main questions here. Like, what should we stop? What should we start? What should we double down on? You know, these are the important questions. This gives you the brilliant period of time in order to start making some strategic decisions.

decisions but you've still got the time before the end of the year so you've got half the year left to actually implement all these yeah and another really great thing to do is potentially do a little pulse survey I wouldn't recommend doing a full engagement survey an insight survey at this point of year just because with people being off it's going to be hard to collect um

probably the response rate that you'd need but little pulse checks here and there particularly within certain teams just to give you an idea particularly you know going back to the very first thing we talked about if you're a bit concerned that actually your engagement isn't great right now and you might be getting a lot of resignations in in august it could be a nice little just temperature check to see how people are doing yeah love it love it okay so question number seven how do we ensure that remote or hybrid workers feel included during the summer great question i think a lot of the i

I think particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, then you'll be thinking summertime, it's summer, it's lovely. If you've got people who are working perhaps in the Southern Hemisphere, it's different for them. How do we make sure they still feel included? How do you make sure that they don't feel invisible or worse, that they might feel overworked because if they are in Australia and it's not summer in Australia, then, you know, they might go, oh, they'll be fine, just give them a bit of extra work. Again, I think when we talked about engagement, if you're, if you're,

remote and hybrid workers are already disconnecting, this could be a time where that's going to really become very obvious. It shouldn't just be a case of, well, how are we going to keep our remote people engaged during these periods? You should be thinking about that all year round. But again, I think it's,

It's understanding that it's as much an operational conversation as a people and culture conversation. If you do have employees internationally, if you do have freelancers that are in the Southern Hemisphere, this could be a really good opportunity to sit down and go, look, do you want extra workload right now? Do you want to take on extra projects and responsibilities? We've got, you know, that work available with the understanding that come your summer,

you know, you expect the same situation where it will offload some of the work that you're doing. So again, it's that workflow that really needs looking at in terms of your people. I think the thing I would mention as well about remote workers or hybrid workers is don't make any assumptions about where they want to work during this period. As we, you know, mentioned earlier, it might be the parents are much more productive and would want to be in the office more. They might want to go up to four days a week in the office.

It might be that actually they're much better remote because it's easier for them to pick up their kids because their mum lives down the street and looks after them during the day. So I think, again, it's having that conversation, allowing that flexibility and not making any assumptions. And I think finally, I'd make it very clear that

for your American hybrid workers, and this is true at any time of the year, but particularly in summer, is for them to feel free to use their time and go outside if they want to. We've had so much research on this recently in terms of touching grass and forest bathing. Being in nature is really productive. So give them permission to do that Monday check-in

on a walk, give them permission to sit outside for an hour over lunch or, you know, take that dog walk up

during the day and make up that work later on. Again, it's that flexibility and that trust. It's all about managing by outcome. So make sure your remote teams also feel able to enjoy and embrace the nicer weather if we have it. Yeah, and I suppose just one last tip around that is just if you do work remotely, either as a contractor or perhaps you do work literally remotely in a different country, something is always...

you've got to make sure that people feel in the loop. And I think over summer, you've got to be even more careful of that because fewer people are off. So they might already be dealing with three members of staff. And over summer, two of them might be off. So they could feel a little bit like,

they're being left out. So just sort of being a bit more, what's the word you use intentionally? That's the one you use, isn't it? A bit more intentionality about everything you do. And I suppose there's always like, you can do sort of like events and sort of games and photo of the week. I mean, it sounds a bit cheesy, but there is a great company called, what's it called when there's loads of glitter, but it's like confetti. Yeah.

Getconfetti.com, I think it is. We had the founder on a year or so ago and she puts together virtual events and they're not cheesy. They're really good. And there'll be just some really good ideas on the website of how you can include more people. Yeah. And again, it's if you've got that flexibility and are on a contract that I worked on,

Lots of our customers had children, so we switched up our kind of service delivery in the summer to include them as well. So if we had courses around kind of parenting or social connection or that type of thing, we'd actually look at or even healthy living. We did food courses with the children as well. Obviously, it's a bit more complicated.

applications of insurance and consent and all that type of stuff but yeah there's a way that you can also switch around your actual service delivery over summary it can have really great great benefits and the staff loved it as well having all the all the kids in great so last question here number eight i've got what role does positive psychology play in navigating the summer slowdown um

I think this is, Leanne talks a lot about positive psychology. I'm going to ask Leanne just to define it quickly before she goes and answers this question in case you've not come across it. But I feel that if we can use science to make us all feel good, then we should definitely be using that. Leanne, so tell us, what is positive psychology and can it help us or not? Very briefly, psychology traditionally focused on how do we get somebody from being broken to surviving? What positive psychology was the first to

introduced an idea is how do we use psychology to get somebody from surviving to thriving so very in that um normal psychology in in inverted commas there um what is

really interesting about positive psychology and about psychology in general in terms of seasonal impacts on us. We know seasonal affective disorder is a thing. We know that vitamin D deficiency significantly impacts our mood, our immune system, our health in general. So there's a lot

Lots of really nice health benefits that just come with summer in terms of more light exposure, more vitamin D, feeling, you know, that you have more energy. People are just typically in a better mood, which then boosts your mood. So there's lots of different things that happen in summer that we can really take advantage of to build our resilience during that period. And it is those typical positive psychology interventions, things like

gratitude journaling things like nursing achievement encouraging people in meetings to share feedback in terms of what's been really impressed them that week because when you're already in a good mood when you're already kind of starting at six it's really easy to push somebody to a ten there's loads

of different things as random acts of kindness and all that that typical thing um so I think anything that can help people reflect on their strengths how well things have gone so far in the year things that they're excited about moving into into the autumn it's

we just have a really nice context to be able to do all these type of positive psychology interventions that they can have even more impact than they normally would. Cool. So there you go. There's your eight questions all answered perfectly. There's obviously going to be a transcript of this as well so you can go through that because we've covered a lot here today. Lee, if...

if the listeners, if the listeners are thinking, oh my God, that is quite a lot. Is the one thing that we can do that will hopefully make summer better for us? What would you say? There's one thing that you can do operationally. There's one thing that you can do psychologically. Okay. So I think psychologically make sure that, that,

that people are feeling optimistic about the summer. They're looking forward to their time off, being reassured that they're appreciated for what they've done. They'll be very welcomed back. Everything will be managed whilst you're away. We'll try and make this transition as easy as possible for you. Give people that time

that reassurance that they can take their holiday and really enjoy it without spending it dreading coming back to work and all the work they're going to come back to. I think operationally get somebody now to project manage the summer, project manage annually within your business and start to figure out who's on leave, where, what needs to happen, who's doing the handoffs, the handbacks, actually plan that workflow through to give you transparency and

your people transparency and everybody, including your, your commercial performance, some reassurance that everything's going to be okay. Fabulous. And I suppose the one thing that I'm getting from what you said there is treating people like adults. Um, and just also just being a little bit more empathetic, just thinking about other people, you know, and, um, and just being, being a bit nicer to each other. I suppose you could talk about civility a lot, but actually, you know, if everyone's in this together, then yeah, very good. Okay.

Okay, so we're back on Tuesday with another edition of This Week in Work, which we've got lots of bits and pieces in, including the news roundup, including a hot take, and including the world-famous weekly workplace surgery where I put your questions to Leanne. And next Thursday, we've got two interviews. We haven't decided which one, so we're not going to spoil it. We've got two interviews that we're not sure which one's going to go in next Thursday and which one's going to go in the following Thursday, but both of them are brilliant. I think you'll love them. They're hugely much more organised, but if you did listen to last Thursday, you'll realise why we're chasing our tails a little bit.

But yeah, see Leanne, I was trying to pretend that we just hadn't yet decided without your fact. We haven't actually had the conversation about which one's which. So we will see you next week. If you have enjoyed this, then some of the most important or some of the best things you can do for us, leave us a review.

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