Your Business: Handling the holidays with Delia Gill, IT Engine

Delia Gill, owner of IT Engine.

Delia Gill is the owner of Wellington-based business IT specialist IT Engine, which currently has 12 staff.

What are some of the issues you face as a business over the Christmas period?

Many of our clients don't stop for Christmas or New Year, so even though we close the office we have to make sure we're still on call and available. And that doesn't just mean we're around; we have to actually be there if someone needs us. So, an example of a client we're on call for is a nationwide food producer, which makes fresh food around the clock and they need IT systems to create all the labels for their food. So if their IT goes down there are no labels and no labels means no food sales.

The main issue for us is we work flat out all year so by Christmas we're all knackered! But only some of the staff can take a break so we try and take turns. Christmas is a time to celebrate and when you're on call there's only so much celebrating you can do. It's a time for family, especially for kids, but just because some of the staff don't have children it doesn't mean I can automatically put them on call. Even if they don't have kids they all still have family and loved ones. And everyone in the team has earned a break.

So what do you do to address those issues?

The first and I think best strategy is to have a really good culture. We've worked together for a long time now and the guys are fantastic about working in with each others' plans and everyone's families.

I'm a firm believer in the saying that the fish rots from the head down. So providing a good atmosphere, and giving the team reason to be loyal to the company are my main jobs. If I don't do those then everything else will suffer. I must be doing something right because we have an extremely low staff turnover. All our engineers have been with us for more than six years with two of them are hitting 15 years.

What sort of planning do you do to make sure everything is going to run smoothly over the holidays?

To make sure we can work in with everyone we're often planning for Christmas the previous January! This means no last-minute panics - everyone knows what they're doing and they can plan around it. We also try and book the guys lots of leave during the year if we can. Having these micro-breaks mean they're not as tired at the end of the year.

Clear communication with our clients is another important strategy. They all know how to get hold of us and we have 0800 numbers for our SLA clients that go directly to the engineers. Our phone system is also set up so that if anybody needs to speak to a staff member they can. This means we're always able to respond to any issues that might come up and clients feel comfortable they can get hold of us when they need to.

What have you found the biggest challenge in terms of getting your planning right for handling the holidays?

Making the time to plan is probably our biggest challenge. We missed a step at the beginning of this year because of some large projects we had going on and because of that some of the guys are more tired than they should be. This means they'll need a bigger break at Christmas so we will have to do some jiggling to make sure they get what they need. We've already booked in our planning session for 2015, so we won't make the same mistake next year.

What's one key piece of advice you would have for other small business owners about handing the holidays?

Never ask your staff to do something that you aren't prepared to do yourself. If you are asking them to work over the holiday break then you should work as well. At Christmas, 90 per cent of the time I'm one of the people on call. I do this so other staff can have the time off because it's my business and it's my responsibility.

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