In South Africa April always presents businesses with a huge amount of pressure due to the number of public holidays. Did you know, Christo Botes of Business Partners reported that the public holidays have cost South Africa R1 billion per day! That's quite scary and certainly does put things in perspective. If we're not mistaken, there are 4 public holidays this month (and 1 tomorrow) which transforms a 20 working day month into a 16 working day month which is almost 40 less hours of production.. almost a week! Due to this, we've been heads down in the office fighting against some crazy timelines and there hasn't been too much else happening so we don't have anything specific to publish for Working Wednesday today. Except for the fact that that's exactly what we have been doing, working!
To ensure that our production flow has been efficient we concentrated on two important things during the month:
#1 Communicate with Partners
The most important person is the customer and when you can anticipate a month of tight deadlines it's always a good idea to communicate this to your customer. That is not to say that deadlines will be missed because your planning should be better, but to inform the customer that there might be delays and/or communication dips. We cannot stress how important this is - just a simple email or phone call and you will prevent potential conflicts and unnecessary uncertainty.
#2 Play it Safe
High pressure and tight deadlines result in a stressful atmosphere at the office. Too often stress leads to illness and when you are down so many days in a month you cannot afford to have anyone taking further days off due to illness. Create a positive atmosphere and enhance internal communication, if someone is struggling with work load ease things up for them by either taking something off their plate or create an environment that allows them to ask for help.
We're pleased to say that we haven't missed a deadline this month and that we're on track for month end, although it's going to be rather touch and go, so don't expect too much noise from us on our social channels.
Good luck everyone and have a good day off tomorrow!
