Every August, the same thing happens. Two or three people are off at once, someone else is working reduced hours to cover the school holidays, and whoever's left is quietly picking up the slack while trying not to say anything. Nobody's planned for it properly. It's just been absorbed, the way it always is.
Most businesses have an annual leave policy. Far fewer have a cover plan. Those are two different things. A leave policy tells you how many days someone's owed and how to book them. A cover plan tells you what happens to their work while they're gone, and it's the second one that usually goes missing.
Why the gap matters more than it looks like it does
When cover isn't planned, it doesn't disappear, it lands on whoever's still in the building. That might be fine for a week. Over a full month of reduced capacity, it starts to show: things get missed, replies slow down, decisions sit waiting for someone who isn't there to make them, and the people covering start to feel like the business only runs because they're quietly propping it up.
That last part is the one worth paying attention to. Resentment doesn't usually show up in August. It shows up in September, when the person who covered everything without being asked starts wondering why they bothered, and starts looking elsewhere. If you've noticed a pattern of people leaving shortly after a stretched summer, this is often where it starts.
What proper cover planning looks like
Good cover planning isn't about making sure every desk has a body in it. It's about knowing, in advance, what needs to keep moving and who can move it.
Start with the work, not the person. Rather than asking “who's covering Sarah while she's away”, ask “what does Sarah do that can't wait three weeks, and who else knows how to do it”. Some things can sit until someone's back. Others, like client responses, payroll, or anything with a deadline attached, can't.
Write it down before the leave is booked, not after. The businesses that manage this well have a simple document for each role: the two or three things that must keep happening, who covers them, and where to find what they'd need (passwords, templates, the current status of anything live). It sounds basic. Most businesses don't have it, which is exactly why the same panic happens every summer.
Spread it across more than one person. Leaning on a single deputy just moves the pressure point rather than solving it. If your most capable person is now covering three roles as well as their own, you haven't planned for reduced capacity, you've just relocated it.
Agree it with the team, not just for them. The people covering should know what they're covering and why, and ideally have a say in how it's split. A cover plan that's handed down after the fact tends to breed the same resentment as no plan at all.
A word on seasonal and temporary staff
Some businesses bring in seasonal or temporary staff to get through summer. In hospitality, travel, leisure and events, that's often not optional: it's how the business copes with August demand. It can work well, but it needs the same care as any other hire. Right to work checks still apply. A short contract still needs to be a proper one. And a temporary member of staff who's thrown in with a five-minute handover is far more likely to make mistakes that the permanent team then has to fix, which defeats the point of bringing them in.
A brief, honest induction, even a half-day one, usually pays for itself within the first week.
How would your cover plan hold up?
Worth five minutes to check, before the next round of leave lands:
• If your most senior person went on leave tomorrow, would anyone know what needs to keep moving without having to ask them first?
• Is that knowledge written down anywhere, or does it only exist in someone's head?
• Can more than one person step in, or does it fall to the same one or two people every time?
• Do the people covering find out in advance, or on the day?
• Could a temporary or seasonal worker pick up from what's written down, or would someone have to talk them through it in person?
If you answered no to more than one of those, that's the gap to close before it becomes a problem.
The takeaway
None of this needs to be complicated or heavily documented. It needs to exist before the leave requests start landing, and it needs to spread the load fairly rather than quietly funnelling it towards whoever's too conscientious to say no. Get that right, and August stops being the month everything holds together by accident, and becomes just another month the business runs properly, whether everyone's in or not.
If your answers above gave you pause, get in touch about our Outsourced HR support: we can help you build a proper plan before the rest of the summer leave hits.