Summer’s here in full force and, no matter where your business is located, chances are your employees have caught summer fever. How can you keep employees motivated, engaged and present when beautiful summer days are calling them away?

The big essential for summer management is being realistic. Know that employees will take vacations, want random days off and, yes, stare out the window longingly at about 3 in the afternoon. That said, here are some ideas to help your team enjoy summer without leaving your business high and dry:

Offer Personal Days

Some companies only provide sick days and holidays, so employees who want to take a day off have to feign being sick. No one likes making (or getting) these phone calls. Be honest about the situation and turn your sick days into sick/personal days so employees can feel better about taking a day off.

Institute Summer Hours

If your business’s workload permits, offering a schedule where employees get every Friday afternoon or every other Friday afternoon off in the summer is a huge morale-booster (and also helps eliminate those fake sick days). If your workload doesn’t permit that, letting employees work four, 10-hour days with Fridays off during the summer can be a great way to give your staff more flexibility. (Make sure you are not breaking any laws with regard to overtime.)

Reward Employees With Comp Time

Comp time off is especially appreciated in the summer. Rewarding employees for their accomplishments with comp time can help motivate them to work harder.

Offer Flextime

If you don’t already offer flextime, summer can be a good time to try it out. Before offering flextime, think through any problems it might cause in terms of scheduling, ensuring adequate coverage among employees. It’s important to be fair and offer flextime options to all employees within a certain category. For instance, while you may not offer it to all employees unilaterally, you can’t offer it to some managers and not others, or to some salespeople and not others.

Offer Remote Work Options

Depending on what your business does, it’s likely many of your employees could easily do their jobs from home or outside the office at least part of the time. As with flextime, think through your remote work policy before you implement it. Let employees know that remote work is a privilege, not a right, and institute checks and balances so you know work is really getting done.

Have Fun

Even if you can’t offer employees time off or the other perks mentioned above, get into the summer spirit. Hold seasonal company events like a company picnic, beach party with family members, Friday BBQ lunches or Friday afternoon ice cream sundaes.

Use Downtime Wisely

If your business slows down a bit in summer, as many do, use the time well. Take care of business tasks you don’t have time for during the normal rush of the workweek. Or consider taking a vacation yourself. After all, it’s not just employees who get summer fever.

Courtesy: Small Biz Trends

About Rieva Lesonsky

Rieva Lesonsky, founder and CEO of GrowBiz Media, is a widely recognized small-business expert and author of the bestselling book Start Your Own Business. Former Editorial Director of Entrepreneur Magazine, Rieva has been meeting with, consulting to and speaking to America’s SMBs—and the big corporations that want to reach them—for over 25 years. This experience has given her an inside perspective on what entrepreneurs want, how to connect with them, and how to help them grow successful businesses. Rieva has worked with B-to-B marketers including American Express, Dell, State Farm and many others, and with organizations including ASBDC, SCORE and the SBA, to market to and educate entrepreneurs.