Is Your Business Summer-Proof?

Summer holidays can stall decisions and frustrate teams. Here’s how smart planning keeps your business moving.

As the Northern Hemisphere eases into summer, millions of people will be preparing for time off, often measured in weeks rather than days, to spend with children, family or simply to unwind. For many, this includes travel, childcare juggling, or the rare pleasure of a slower pace.

Come September, students return to school, and businesses often pick up pace again. That said, companies still need to run throughout July and August, and that’s where problems arise.

Too often, leaders fail to plan effectively for this period. Decisions stall, morale dips, customers wait and work piles up.

This article explores how businesses can avoid a summer slump by planning more intentionally for annual leave, especially when senior staff are out of office.

Holiday planning shouldn’t stop at a headcount

Most companies have rules around annual leave to ensure minimum staffing levels. These are often blunt tools, such as capping time off to “no more than X people off at once” without looking closely at who is off, and what happens in their absence.

In practice, that means project work slows down, service delivery wobbles, and junior staff are left firefighting or waiting for decisions. What’s missing isn’t goodwill, it’s forward planning.

The view from the office

Having spent many summers working through peak holiday season, I’ve witnessed first-hand how under planning can affect performance. When key decision-makers disappear, sometimes in sequence, sometimes all at once, everyone else is left treading water. This isn’t a plea for leaders to skip their holidays. It’s a reminder that proper planning is a leadership responsibility.

For many working parents, the challenge of managing childcare through six weeks of summer (on 28 days’ leave a year) is an impossible juggling act. We should be helping them, not compounding the problem. We can start by avoiding them returning to a higher workload that could have been avoided.

So what should leaders do?

Here’s a more structured approach to managing summer absences that keeps things moving, without burning anyone out.

1. Know your operational threshold

Start by determining how many people can be off at once within each team or function without causing disruption. This needs to be specific, not a rough guess.

2. Set clear, fair policies

Establish a structured process for requesting time off, with minimum notice periods depending on the length of leave. While you can’t prioritise parents over others (it’s potentially discriminatory), you can ask for early submissions, or use first-come-first-served or rotation models.

If requests clash, ask people separately if they can flex their dates. Explain you’re trying to avoid saying no, but that operational needs must be considered. Most employees are more understanding than you think, provided they’re treated respectfully.

3. Map leadership absences

Once holiday requests are approved, map out when key leaders will be away. Cross-check this against planned projects, recurring decisions, and strategic activity.

Then, and this is the step most often skipped, assign decision-making authority before people go on leave. For day-to-day issues, this can be a deputy. For bigger decisions, it should be a peer, not someone more senior.

Crucially, prepare those stepping up. Brief them properly and offer shadowing or scenario walk-throughs. It’s a great development opportunity, but only if they’re set up to succeed.

No time to plan? That’s the risk.

If you’re too busy to plan for summer absences, then you’re probably too busy to deal with the fallout when things start going wrong. The cost of poor planning is almost always higher than the cost of preparing properly. Summer doesn’t have to mean stagnation, but it does require intentional leadership.

It’s not too late – but don’t leave it much longer

If you're reading this and thinking it’s already the start of summer, you’re right. It's not too late to take action, however.

Even if leave has already been approved, it’s still worth reviewing who's off and when. You can still identify potential gaps in coverage, assign decision-making responsibility, and brief the right people. A short investment of time now could save you weeks of confusion later.

While you’re at it, look ahead. Now is exactly the right time to plan for the autumn half-term break, and yes, even the festive period. Some teams begin winding down as early as early December and holiday booking requests often come through earlier than you’d expect. Proper planning for these periods can make or break your end-of-year performance.

If you’ve already noticed decisions slowing down or projects slipping through the cracks, it’s not too late to intervene. A quick review of who’s off, and who’s stepping in, could make a world of difference; not just for now, but for your customers and your team’s morale too.

At Consult DSR, we support founder-led businesses and SMEs with building the operational strength they need to thrive year-round. If you'd like help reviewing your team structure, leave policies, or leadership resilience over the holidays, get in touch.