Ahhh... Thanksgiving week and the kick off to the holiday season is finally upon us, but for those of us in healthcare staffing we know that this is truly the silly season. 

Have you ever felt this way?

Here are five tips to help you make it through the holidays without losing your mind:

1. Double check your travelers contracts verses their schedule to make sure that there wasn’t a miscommunication between the facility’s scheduler and what is in your travelers contract. This is a very proactive step to take as it helps to do this ahead of time thus not having any fires to put out the week of a holiday. 

2. Have a strategic plan for payroll. We all know the short weeks combined with the end of the year can make payroll extremely hectic and stressful. This may result in coming in on a Sunday to enter timesheets and over-communicating to your healthcare professionals the deadlines for timecard submission.  Use your texting feature in BlueSky to alert your staff as to when the timecards are due to the payroll department and your missing timecard list to hound those that haven’t turned their timecards in.

3. Get your holiday cards to arrive on-time and to the right address.  Many systems including BlueSky can create mailing labels.  Do not wait until last minute to print these. Know how to get your addresses together for holiday cards and make sure you have the right address for your travelers. You want your cards to actually arrive to where they are actually for the holidays, right?

4. Make sure that your facilities, especially any new contracts in 2014 are setup with the correct holidays start and end. Some facilities have different rules that apply to when they start holiday pay and you don’t want to be fixing this after the first of the year or the week of Christmas so be sure proactively check these facility’s holiday time calculation rules.

5. Plan your holiday party and invite everyone including your healthcare professionals then do something fun for your travelers that can’t make it to the party.  If it were me, I would do something extra for those working during Christmas or New Years.  It will mean a lot and something little goes a long way especially for those travelers who are away from their family and friends during the holidays.

If you have any tips on what you do to prepare for the holidays please feel free to share them here!