By Ashley Preen

December 21, 2015

How and why business owners should have a holiday

The holiday season can be more stressful for a business owner than it should be. Many businesses are closed down during the holidays and so are not making any money. Even if you don’t close down, you can lose important employees while they go on holiday.

But holidays should be a time for you to enjoy and to give you a chance to recharge.

Here are a few tips for business owners to help make holidays fun and less stressful.

Shut down the business

Of course, completely shutting down your business might not be possible but you are going to shut it down for Christmas Day and New Year’s Day anyway so consider keeping the business closed for a few days extra.

Not only will your employees love you, they will come back to the office happier, refreshed, and more productive.

Decorate your office

But before you shut down your business for the holidays, decorate it. Most offices are pretty boring to look at, so decorating it will help bring out the joy in your employees during the dull winter days.

Recharge and repair yourself

If you are scared about your business falling apart while you are on holiday, you clearly know how important you are to its success.

But that just means you need to keep yourself in optimal condition, just like you would an important piece of machinery.

Giving yourself a break gives you a chance to recharge so you can come back to the office with more energy and ideas.

Give yourself the time and space to have new business ideas

It can be difficult to come up with any great business ideas while you are busy actually running the business.

Having a break gives you some distance from your business – this often means you’ll get a new perspective on how the business is going, and give you some great ideas on how to improve the business.

And then when you are ready to go back to work your holiday relaxation will have given you the extra energy you need to implement the ideas.

Trust your employees to keep the business going

This applies to any time of the year that you decide to go on a holiday – if you did your job right when you hired your staff, they should be good at their jobs.

That means your business is unlikely to collapse just because you’ve gone on holiday. Trust that your employees know what they are doing and that the business will still be standing upon your return.

You don’t have to be a Christian to enjoy Christmas

Don’t worry if you aren’t a Christian, many people who celebrate Christmas aren’t either. It doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. So stick up a Christmas tree in the office, smother the whole office in tinsel, and get into the Christmas spirit.

If your employees see that when you aren’t stressing out over your business you do actually know how to have fun, they’ll be more willing to like you and so want to do a good job for you – when they come back from their holiday, of course!