Walking into Costco mid-summer can be a rough seasonal adjustment if you stumble unexpectedly onto their aisles of Christmas decorations. “But it’s summer!” you think. “It’s too soon!” The truth is, Costco is doing you a favor. When you manage a team, no matter what size your company or department, it’s best to start thinking about holiday staffing needs early… Costco-Christmas early. At ICUC, we work with trends and always think ahead. The holidays are no different. We can help you manage your seasonal social team needs so you have seamless staffing during the holidays – it’s all about holiday social media moderation.
From logistics to employee morale, there are loads of reasons for planning your staffing requirements well in advance.
Give the Gift of Mental Wellness
We love to idealize the holidays – decorations, seeing loved ones, carol singers, fun food, and so much more – but the reality is, they’re the most stressful, unhealthy, and expensive time of year.
In fact, “holiday heart syndrome” is really a thing. It’s myriad of cardiac conditions common at Christmas. Then there are mental health issues like depression and anxiety. Work may not be the root of these conditions, but it exacerbates them.
Workers today take 20% less vacation time than they did before year 2000, just 16 days instead of 20.
Studies show if employees take a second (or more) break from work in any given year, it cuts the risk of heart attack by 50% in men and 30% in women!
A 2015 CareerBuilder survey said, of those calling in sick just because they wanted a day off, 20% of them reported doing so in December.
Mental health matters, and curbing workplace stress greatly helps employees over the long-term. One way to reduce holiday stress for your team is giving seasonal time off to anyone who wants it. For many, it’s an important spiritual and family time of year. For others, they’re battling “seasonal affective disorder” and need a sunny getaway to recharge.
For whatever the reasons you decide to take Christmas week, or other times, off work and call in our pros, you’ll benefit. Fact is, a full third of companies offer the Christmas week off as part of their recruitment package, because more and more people realize how important it is to recharge in that frenetic social season.
Help Us Help You
One of business’s biggest challenges is focusing on the present while eyeballing the future. For successful navigation of the holiday season, planning well ahead can keep you at your best.
Thanksgiving to the New Year is arguably the most important time of the year for social teams. People are holidaying, visiting eateries with old friends, and often buying more gifts than they will for the other 47 weeks of the year combined. We know you want to hear what’s being said about your services and products in the holiday season. That’s where we help.
With employees around the world, we have deep resources for covering your social moderation during holidays year-round.
Planning is Fun!
You may not love planning four months ahead for coverage over the holidays, but your team will love being green-lit for holiday planning. They’ll have time to find great sales, book flights long in advance, score hotel deals. More importantly, they’ll get to daydream, thanks to you. That’s a morale boost you’ll enjoy for the weeks and months leading up to the holidays.
Months? Yes! The Netherlands did a study on workplace vacations, and they found that people got the biggest mental boost from the weeks of planning vacations – not returning from them. In fact, the study showed this positive “planning” mood boost lasted an average of eight weeks!
Another reason to plan early is the holidays’ historically-high sick-day usage. Engaging a relief team may mean you avoid sick pay, holiday overtime costs, and more. Getting the team back to work feeling recharged is just another bonus.
Vacations for Everyone!
In 2015, a whopping 56% of American employees didn’t even take a vacation. They may work for great companies that encourage vacation use, yet vacays never happen. This can be for many reasons – scheduling, workload, fear of “the first day back,” and beyond.
And some studies suggest the leading reason why Americans don’t take enough holiday is due to vacation not being required by law in the USA. Employees often fear they’ll be seen as lazy or irresponsible if they take too much time off. You can change that by showing them it’s important to value time off and spend time with family by giving them a break over the holidays.
We can provide coverage for 30-day periods, which could include Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, or any other holiday your team celebrates.
No more overtime grief, no futzing about additional stat time paid. No soliciting for “volunteers” to work on Christmas Eve. Maybe even no office overhead.
We’ll take over and you’ll take time off.
We Got This
Even better is that when we come to help, we step in as total pros.
This isn’t like calling a local temp agency for a Jack-of-all-trades to fill in at the desk while Janet attends her friend’s Hawaiian wedding. Calling ICUC is like hiring a firehouse full of firefighters to keep watch over a Girl Guide’s campfire. Everything will be just fine.
And “first-day-back dread” shouldn’t be a thing. Your returning team won’t lose half a day in the New Year to fixing mistakes. There’ll be no catching up with a backlog of things that could’ve been easily moderated by someone with know-how. We’ll have done those things.
Upon your return, our dashboard data, exportable reports, and other methods mean your team will be up to speed and ready to move ahead on day post-holidays.
Snow Days? No Way!
Anyone living outside the sunbelt knows winter often has different plans than we do. Think of ICUC as just another means of weather-proofing. Your holiday social media moderation weather-proofing.
With our team working remotely, there’s no worries about snow squalls or traffic pile-ups interfering with your social moderation. Instead, you’ll rest easily, with our remote working team meeting your needs from afar, whatever the weather.
With hundreds of employees around the world, we’re flexible in how we deploy our team, so weather and other timely interruptions can be avoided with some strategy and juggling.
Value-Added Services
Contract us early and we can work with you on identifying seasonal listening targets, creating special campaigns, and highlighting data sets to focus on. We’ll be able to install these frameworks and explore value-added analysis for your team to tackle in January, when they’re fresh from a break and ready for a new year with new company goals.
What can we do for you?
- Listen for social comments on your bricks-and-mortar locations, monitor favored brand keywords, moderate comments on purchasing decisions. We’ll keep you on top of social feedback during the shopping-heavy holiday season.
- Approve/delete/escalate comments, photos, and videos around-the-clock, so there isn’t anything being neglected or a backlog to confront upon your return.
- Manage communities: We’ll foster your communities around the holiday season. Like with moderation, we will cheerlead your brand, support your clients, and create positive sentiment.
Start Your Holiday Social Media Moderation Countdown Today
Imagine the joy in your team when you tell them they’re taking the holidays off and pros will manage the social team while they’re eating feasts with their families.
And encourage your staff to share how they plan to use their time off, so you get to enjoy the gift of giving, and they can celebrate planning. This will foster team building along with better mental wellness.
Contact ICUC Social and get us onboard with holiday social media moderation so we can help you and your team have a holiday to remember.
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