6 strategies for anticipating post-holiday turnover

A hard reality of the holiday season is the anticipation of spring turnover. A lot of workers that plan on stepping away from their current roles will most likely make their move after the holidays.

Whether you have already experienced turnover from "The Great Resignation" or have seen little of it within your organization, you can expect to see some employees transition after this holiday season. If you want the new year to be a season of rest after a chaotic holiday season, rather than frantically dealing with unanticipated turnover, the time to start preparing is now.

Here are our suggestions for anticipating turnover in the spring of 2022:

1. Re-establish succession plans

Now is a good time to review whether you have succession plans in place for department leadership roles, key staff and roles that are critical for the success of your church or ministry. Whether you are starting from scratch or simply making sure your plans are up to date, we recommend taking a look at some of our succession resources.

2. Check-in with department heads

Ask your leadership team: are there any roles they wish to add to their teams in the new year? Would your staff benefit from the addition of a new team member, or the reshuffling of some roles? Make sure that if anything needs to be done to boost morale, take on cultural issues, or compensate for gaps in teams, that it is addressed.

3. Anticipate new talent in 2022

Keep in mind that as you may lose some staff members, this is also a key time to hire valuable talent as they leave other jobs. Competition for many roles will inevitably be higher after the holidays. In recruiting, far more calls happen in January, as people get ready to leave their jobs and start applying for the new year. So if you are looking to be ready for that influx of available talent coming in the new year, now is the time to get started. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to hire key talent.

4. Have empathy

Like we discussed in our last blog, the ultimate key to retaining talent is empathy. It can be the defining factor that makes someone choose to stay. But whether team members are in it for the long haul or are considering going their separate ways, it’s important that you honor and respect them. At the end of the day, if someone is burnt out and desperate to get out, your empathy won’t convince them to stay, but it will encourage them as a brother or sister in Christ. If you honor people as they leave, you create a culture of vulnerability and growth.

5. Define healthy candidacy

It’s important as we go into a big hiring season that you determine whether someone would be a healthy contribution to your team. If they are massively burnt out from an old job that left them spent and completely exhausted, they may need extra time to adjust to a new job and team. Ensure that you do not perpetuate patterns of burnout and unhealthy staff members.

6. Allow those who stay opportunities to rest and recuperate

You want to incentivize people who stick around by giving them time after a busy season to recover, rather than driving them into the ground to make up for team members lost. Overworking your staff that stays will only continue your turnover and create a culture that burns out hot and fast. Honor your staff and give them extra incentives to do work that is good and glorifying to God, but do not expect them to compensate for staff turnover that is no fault of their own.

The end of 2021 is rapidly approaching, and we’ll be in the new year before we know it. Vanderbloemen knows that the end of the year is a particularly busy season, especially for churches and ministries, and we want to help alleviate that stress and busyness in every way possible. In the upcoming weeks, we will be releasing blogs, e-books, podcasts and other resources with tips and wisdom for making it through the holidays and how to succeed in 2022. Make sure that you are subscribed to our newsletter to receive these resources directly in your inbox weekly.