Your permanent staff will say yes when you ask them to work extra shifts in December. They’ll smile and say they understand when you cancel their holiday requests. They’ll assure you they’re coping when you check in.
Should you believe them?
Not because they’re dishonest, but because they’ve learnt that busy season means everyone just has to push through. It’s easier to say “I’m fine” than to be the person who lets the team down when orders are backing up and clients are calling.
But here’s what they’re actually thinking whilst they’re nodding along:
They’re wondering if they’ll see their kids open presents on Christmas morning or if they’ll be too exhausted to care. They’re calculating whether the overtime pay is worth missing their family gatherings. They’re quietly resenting that “temporary” peak season pressure somehow lasts from October through January now.
And come February, the good ones start updating their CVs.
The problem with relying on goodwill during Q4 is that goodwill has a limit. Your team will carry you through one brutal Christmas. Maybe two. But by the third year of cancelled holidays and 60-hour weeks, you’re not just burning people out – you’re teaching your best workers that loyalty is a one-way street.
This is why understaffing during peak season is never just a December problem. It’s a retention problem that shows up six months later when you lose the warehouse supervisor you spent three years training. It’s a morale problem that makes recruiting harder because word gets around about what working for you is really like. It’s a quality problem because exhausted people make expensive mistakes.
The businesses that maintain stable teams year after year aren’t the ones asking for heroic effort every Christmas. They’re the ones who plan their capacity properly so that “busy season” doesn’t mean “everyone suffers season.”
Your permanent staff deserve to actually enjoy their holidays – not just theoretically have them on the roster whilst worrying about whether the warehouse will cope without them. When you bring in additional resource for peak periods, you’re not just solving a short-term capacity problem. You’re telling your core team that their wellbeing matters more than your convenience.
That message is worth more than any Christmas bonus.