.png)
“The colleague responsible for this is on holiday.”
“Nothing gets done around here at this time of year.”
“The managing director is unavailable, so we can only get it signed in September.”
Automatic out-of-office replies start arriving immediately after an email is sent. Familiar phrases and familiar situations. At most workplaces, the summer months are unlike any other period of the year.
Organisations may slow down during the summer, but HR processes do not stop - in fact, they often shift into an even higher gear. Leave administration continues, questions about replacements keep coming in, while countless data changes, certificates and ad hoc updates need to be managed during the hottest months of the year.
When one employee posts their planned holiday dates in a chat group, others send an email and then wait for confirmation over the phone, while an additional signed paper form needs to be delivered to another colleague, HR administration can become impossible to follow within moments.
Who wants to take leave and when? Who has approved it? What is the current status of the request? When internal communication takes place across several parallel channels, mistakes are almost inevitable when managing summer leave requests.
It is worth turning leave requests and approvals into one standardised digital process, allowing the status of each request and approval to be tracked in real time.
“I got married during the summer and now officially use a different name.”
“I need an employer certificate for a loan application.”
“My home address has changed.”
“I have a question about my payslip.”
Everyday requests continue to reach HR throughout the summer months, even though resolving them smoothly can be slightly more difficult during this period. Some members of the HR team may also be on holiday, processing and response times may be longer, or it may not be clear who should handle a particular case.
When employees can submit their requests to HR through a ticketing or digital administration system, no request gets lost - even during the busiest periods.
Every HR professional knows the situations in which an employee is simply asking for directions because they do not know where to find a document or piece of information. The same policy, form or internal announcement then needs to be sent repeatedly and individually to every colleague who requests it. During the busy summer period, this can consume a significant amount of HR’s time.
With an easily searchable digital document library, employees can quickly and independently find what they need, eliminating unnecessary rounds of emails with HR.
The shortcomings and risks of email communication become particularly visible during the summer. Many employees are away, working arrangements change because of replacements, and fewer people regularly check their emails in the first place. Under these circumstances, important information and internal news can easily be missed, while meeting deadlines also becomes more difficult.
A shared digital platform enables targeted communication. This allows everyone to be informed directly during the summer months about the information - and only the information - they personally need to know. Employees who are interested in additional internal news can stay updated through the shared news feed.
Even if the summer flood of emails were an effective way to manage HR administration, one problem would remain: many employees cannot be reached this way at all. Non-desk employees working in manufacturing, logistics, hospitality and other industries also need access to documents and HR services. They also need to be informed about company updates just as effectively as employees working in front of a computer.
Mobile access has become an essential part of corporate internal communication, ensuring that non-desk employees can also be fully reached and access information at any time.
Between June and September, there is no need to constantly introduce new methods to keep HR administration running successfully.
• Blue Colibri provides a digital platform that every employee can access from their mobile phone, regardless of their role or work location.
• Employees can submit their leave requests online and directly follow every stage of the approval process.
• Instead of endlessly sending papers and emails back and forth, summer HR administration can move to one organised digital platform.
• In the Blue Colibri document library, employees can easily find the necessary policies, forms and information materials, while both HR and employees can simply follow ticketing processes.
• Through the Blue Colibri News Feed, employees can quickly find both personally relevant information and general internal company news.
The summer months reveal just how stable an organisation’s HR processes really are. When administration relies too heavily on emails, phone calls and paper-based processes, everyday HR operations can quickly become chaotic during the holiday period. Digital HR administration makes daily tasks faster, clearer and easier to manage, while employees can independently find everything they need within the system.
