Most of your holiday staffing gets decided weeks before the rush, whether or not anyone plans it. Here’s what to lock in, and when, so every location has coverage through New Year’s.
It’s a Friday in mid-December. At one of your locations, three people want the same Saturday off. Two seasonal hires still haven’t finished their paperwork. The general manager is texting staff from their own phone to fill tomorrow’s closing shift, and nobody remembers who was promised what a month ago.
None of that started that week. Each problem traces back to a decision that got made by default weeks earlier: no request deadline, hiring that started late, no plan for call-outs. And none of it would have shown up in a company-wide headcount. A location can have plenty of people on the roster and only one who can close. Holiday staffing has to be planned the way it breaks down, one location, role and shift at a time.
This plan is for operators running many locations. Its timeline counts back from your first peak week, so it works wherever your rush falls, and every step still helps if you’re starting late.
Key takeaways
Plan holiday staffing location by location. A company-wide headcount can hide a store with one closer.
Count back from your first peak week, starting six weeks out.
Hire when hours are short. Cross-train when a skill is short.
Write the call-out plan down before peak, including when to borrow staff from a nearby location.
Review every location the week before peak, and give each open gap an owner.
How far ahead to plan holiday staffing: a timeline counted back from peak
Start with your first peak week. For most retail, restaurant and service operators, that’s Thanksgiving week, with a second stretch from the week before Christmas through New Year’s. Count back from the Monday it starts. Build each location’s gap list six weeks out, collect availability and start hiring five weeks out, and close time-off requests three weeks out. Two weeks out, post the first peak week’s schedule and have seasonal hires on supervised shifts. Run a readiness review the week before. The checklist at the end puts each milestone next to an owner.
The two-week posting milestone only binds you if an advance-notice law covers your locations (see step 6). Even if one doesn’t, it gives your team time to swap shifts before the week starts. If you have a second peak in late December, run the same timeline again. Most of the work carries over.
What if you have three weeks or less before peak?
If your first peak week is less than three weeks out, compress the timeline. Build the gap list first (step 1) and set a firm cutoff for any remaining time-off requests. Then work the shifts where a gap would leave no qualified closer or supervisor on duty, using volunteers and cross-trained backups, since a new hire may not be ready in time. Run the readiness review in the last few days before peak, and use the full timeline for the late-December weeks.
What if your peak is January?
For gyms and fitness studios, late December is often quieter, and the rush comes with the new year. The same plan works about four weeks later. Settle time off for the holidays, then hire and train for early January.
1. Build a coverage forecast and gap list for each location
Pull each location’s busiest weeks from last season, by week and by daypart: transactions or appointments, next to the hours you scheduled. For a location that opened since then, borrow the pattern from a similar site. Note anything that will change traffic this year, like a new promotion or road construction out front. Then look for signs coverage fell short, like overtime that kept repeating, missed breaks or closing tasks left for the morning crew. Ask each manager what got pushed off last December and why.
Count the work that doesn’t ring the register. Opening and closing checks, cleaning, restocking and shift handoffs still need someone during a rush. If two people are serving customers while a third runs the opening checklist, you have two people of service coverage and one who’s spoken for.
Then set a minimum for each critical role on each peak shift, such as a shift lead, a closer or a certified technician, and compare it with the people who can actually do that work. Ten names on a roster won’t tell you who can open, close or run a shift alone. Keep a simple gap list for each location: date, shift, role, the coverage you need, the coverage you’ve confirmed, the next action and one owner. That list drives the rest of this plan.
Last season’s call-outs belong on the list too. Where missed shifts clustered by location, role and day of week tells you where to line up backups first. Then turn the gap list into daily hour targets for each location’s holiday weeks, so schedulers have a number to build against.
In Woven: You see where to line up backups first. Call In Insights show where missed shifts clustered by location, position and day of week, and a labor plan sets daily hour targets for each location.
2. Set one holiday time-off deadline and your blackout dates
Announce a single request deadline for every location and say how you’ll settle ties. First submitted, a rotation from last year, or seniority all work. Pick one, write it down and apply it the same way everywhere, so a manager in one market makes the same call as a manager in another. Announce the date every decision will be shared, too, so nobody waits on a slow trickle of approvals.
Then set limits. Decide how many people in each role can be off on the same day, and block out the few dates you can’t spare anyone, like the Saturday before Christmas. When two of a location’s only closers ask for the same day, add it to the gap list. Cross-training or a volunteer may solve it.
In Woven: Fewer requests to untangle by hand. Time Off blocks requests on block-out dates or inside the minimum notice period, warns when too many people in the same position and location ask for the same day, and shows team members how many days they’ve used.
Two cautions. A request deadline doesn’t override protected leave or accommodation requests, so give managers a clear route to HR when a request falls into that territory. And a vacation blackout shouldn’t block legally protected sick leave. Our post on sick-time policies across locations covers how to keep the two apart.
3. Collect holiday availability before you build schedules
Before anyone builds a holiday week, ask every team member which holiday dates they can’t work, whether they want extra hours, and whether they’d pick up a shift at a nearby location. The people who want more hours are your first coverage list, and asking early means you hear from them before they make other plans.
Some availability changes for the whole season, like a college student home for break or a parent whose kids are out of school. Record those changes before anyone builds a holiday week, so schedules don’t rest on last month’s availability. To build faster, start each location’s holiday weeks from a prior week or a saved template and adjust from there. If you’re still comparing tools, our guide to the best employee scheduling app for multi-location teams covers what to look for.
In Woven: Conflicts get caught before the schedule goes out. Team members submit their availability, including on-call times if you turn that on, and a manager accepts it. A shift that conflicts with accepted availability or approved time off can warn or be blocked, and holiday weeks can start from a prior week or a saved template.
4. Hire seasonal staff for hours, cross-train for skills
Go down each location’s gap list and match each gap to a fix. If a location has enough people but only one closer, train a second closer, because a new hire won’t be ready in time. If the hours themselves are short, hire. Some gaps close with volunteers who asked for extra hours, and a few may need a shorter day or a paused service.
Make each cross-training assignment specific: who learns which backup role, who trains them, and the date a manager will watch them do it. Use the same training program at every location, with local notes where a site works differently.
For new hires, work back from the first shift they need to run on their own. A seasonal hire needs paperwork done, paid training on your standards and a couple of supervised shifts before they’re much help on a December Saturday. Counting back from your first peak week, that means starting to hire about five weeks out, so new hires are through paperwork and on supervised shifts two weeks before peak. Our employee onboarding checklist covers the first week in detail. Three rules to plan around:
Form I-9: USCIS requires Section 2 within three business days of the day employment begins. Someone who starts Monday needs it done by Thursday.
Training time: under the Department of Labor’s hours-worked rules, training is paid time unless it’s outside normal hours, voluntary, not job-related and no other work happens during it. Budget the hours and schedule onboarding on the clock.
Teen workers: under federal rules, 14- and 15-year-olds can work up to 3 hours on a school day and 18 in a school week (8 and 40 when school is out). Outside summer they can’t work after 7 p.m., which rules out most closing shifts. Many states set tighter limits.
Sign people off by watching them work. Before a seasonal hire or a cross-trained backup covers a shift alone, have a manager watch them do the role’s core tasks and note what they still need to practice. Until then, count them as supervised help on the schedule, and keep them off the independent-coverage line of your gap list.
In Woven: Less paperwork to chase. New hires sign W-4 and I-9 forms on their phone, and the signed copies are filed to their record. Learning paths can be assigned by position, and the time clock raises minor-labor alerts and can block a clock-in for a minor.
5. Plan call-out coverage for the days that will go wrong
Someone will call out on your busiest Saturday. Plan for it now. Name a backup for each role at each location, keep an on-call list, and decide who approves a pickup when the general manager is the one who’s out.
Write the call-out sequence down: who the manager contacts first, how long they wait for an answer, and when it goes to the district manager. Borrow from a nearby location only when that location stays covered and the person knows the work, or one short location becomes two.
Count the travel and the hours. Under the same hours-worked rules, travel from one job site to another during the workday is work time. For nonexempt staff working for the same employer, the FLSA counts overtime by workweek, so 30 hours at one location and 15 at another is 45 hours, five of them overtime. Make sure payroll adds up hours across locations.
Decide what a manager may shorten or pause when nobody is available, and who approves it, so the GM working a double stays the last resort. Then test the plan once: a closing supervisor calls out on a Saturday and the nearest location is short too. Our business continuity plan template has a format for recording those decisions.
Let team members trade or give away shifts with a manager’s approval, so a closing shift doesn’t end up with someone who can’t close.
In Woven: Open shifts get filled without a round of texts. A call-in from the app turns the shift into an open shift. With coverage alerts on, coworkers volunteer and the manager picks who works it. Swaps and giveaways go through manager approval.
Watch hours as well as gaps. Holiday weeks are where overtime and short turnarounds pile up, and a worn-out team in December shows up in January turnover. Check each schedule against your overtime rules, minimum rest between shifts and hour targets before it goes out, and set holiday pay rates and dates once for the whole company.
In Woven: Overtime and rest problems show up before the week is posted. Schedules are checked against your overtime, minimum rest and labor plan rules before they’re published, each set to warn or block, and holiday pay multipliers and dates are set once.
6. Check your advance-notice scheduling rules
This section is general information, not legal advice. Rules change, so check the official sources for the places you operate.
Some cities and states have fair workweek or predictive scheduling laws that require certain employers to post schedules in advance, in several cases 14 days ahead. If one applies to you, each peak week’s schedule has to be out two weeks before that week starts, so time-off requests need to close before then.
These laws usually apply only to specific industries and to employers above a size threshold, so many service businesses fall outside them. Where they do apply, changing a posted schedule can carry extra pay, and some add a premium when a closing shift is followed too closely by an opening one. Start with the official pages for Seattle, Chicago, Oregon, Philadelphia, New York City and Los Angeles County, check whether your state or city has passed anything newer, and confirm with employment counsel.
7. Tell every location the same thing at the same time
Send one message from HQ with the dates, the time-off deadline, how holiday pay works and who to call when something goes wrong. Send a reminder before each deadline. When every location hears it at once, no manager has to explain a policy they heard secondhand. If you run a franchise system, our guide to franchise management software covers tools that get the same dates and standards to every franchisee.
A few days later, ask a few people at each location where to find the holiday schedule and call-out process. If they can’t, send it again.
In Woven: Every location hears the same thing at once. Messages go to the locations and positions they apply to, with scheduled reminders, and publishing the holiday schedule notifies everyone on it.
If your holiday policy needs a sign-off, our guide to the handbook acknowledgement process covers how to collect one.
How to run a pre-season readiness review
In the week before your first peak week, have each location manager walk a district or regional lead through their gap list, holiday schedules and backup plan. Check that every opening and closing shift has a qualified person and a backup, that trainees are counted as supervised help, and that holiday hours and the call-out process are posted where staff can see them. Check equipment too: preventive maintenance done, critical equipment inspected and emergency repair contacts confirmed. A machine that fails on a peak Saturday pulls staff off the floor as well.
Mark each location ready, action needed or blocked, and give anything open an owner and a date. Keep it location by location, because one company-wide readiness score can hide a store with no Saturday closer. For the rest of your pre-holiday list, see the Q4 readiness checklist.
Holiday staffing checklist for multi-location operators
Copy this into whatever your managers already use, put a name next to each owner and add a status column. The timing counts back from your first peak week.
When | Action | Owner |
|---|---|---|
6 weeks out | Build a gap list for every location, with one owner per gap | Location manager, reviewed by district manager |
6 weeks out | Send every location the time-off deadline, tie rule and blackout dates | Operations lead |
6 weeks out | Set the route for protected leave and accommodation requests to HR | HR lead |
5 weeks out | Collect availability and an extra-hours list from every team member | Location manager |
5 weeks out | Start hiring for hour gaps and assign cross-training for skill gaps, each with a sign-off date | Location manager |
3 weeks out | Close holiday time-off requests and share decisions on the announced date | Location manager |
2 weeks out | Seasonal hires through paperwork (I-9 Section 2 within three business days of their start) and on paid training | Location manager and HR |
2 weeks out | Post the first peak week’s schedule, if a 14-day notice rule applies | Location manager |
2 weeks out | A backup per role, an on-call list and a written call-out sequence | Location manager |
2 weeks out | Confirm payroll adds each person’s hours across locations for overtime | Payroll lead |
Before you build | Set the holiday pay multiplier and holiday dates | Operations or payroll lead |
Each week | Before the schedule goes out, check overtime, rest and teen-hour limits | Scheduler |
1 week out | Readiness review, location by location, including equipment | District manager |
During peak | Post each week two weeks before it starts | Location manager |
Week after peak | Note what broke while it’s fresh | District manager |
Back to that Friday in December
Run the same day with the prep work done. The three Saturday requests were settled weeks ago by a rule everyone saw. The seasonal hires finished their paperwork weeks before the rush, and the newest closer was signed off the week before. When someone calls out for tomorrow’s close, the shift goes up as an open shift, a coworker who asked for extra hours takes it, and the manager approves it from the floor. That’s what a plan set weeks ahead buys: the busiest weeks run on systems instead of heroics.
In the first week of January, write down what broke, which call-outs repeated, and how many hours your managers worked. Manager hours are where holiday strain hides, and next year’s plan starts from that list. Our piece on quiet cracking covers why.
Holiday staffing FAQ
How early should you start holiday scheduling for multiple locations?
About six weeks before your first peak week, which for most operators is Thanksgiving week. Close time-off requests three weeks out, and post schedules two weeks out if an advance-notice law applies. Starting later still works if you compress the steps and cover the riskiest shifts first.
How do you handle competing holiday time-off requests fairly?
Pick one tie rule, such as first submitted, a rotation or seniority, publish it with the deadline and use it at every location. Cap how many people per role can be off on the same day.
Do predictive scheduling laws apply to my business?
It depends on where your locations are, your industry and your size. These laws exist in a handful of cities and states and usually cover specific industries above an employee-count threshold, so check each place you operate and confirm with employment counsel. This is general information, not legal advice.
How many seasonal employees should each location hire?
Take last year’s peak-week hours at each location, subtract what your current team can cover after approved time off, and divide by the weekly hours a seasonal hire will realistically work. Add a margin for call-outs. If the gap is a skill, like closing, cross-train first.
Does cross-training help with holiday staffing shortages?
Yes, when the gap is a skill. If a location has enough people but only one closer, training a second is faster than hiring. When you borrow cross-trained staff from another site, count travel between sites as hours worked.
What should a holiday call-out policy include?
One way to call out that reaches the manager, a named backup for each role, an on-call list, a written escalation sequence and who approves pickups when the GM is out. Share it in writing before peak season.
See how Woven handles time off, coverage and schedules across every location. Book a demo, or explore Woven for people teams.
Most of your holiday staffing gets decided weeks before the rush, whether or not anyone plans it. Here’s what to lock in, and when, so every location has coverage through New Year’s.
It’s a Friday in mid-December. At one of your locations, three people want the same Saturday off. Two seasonal hires still haven’t finished their paperwork. The general manager is texting staff from their own phone to fill tomorrow’s closing shift, and nobody remembers who was promised what a month ago.
None of that started that week. Each problem traces back to a decision that got made by default weeks earlier: no request deadline, hiring that started late, no plan for call-outs. And none of it would have shown up in a company-wide headcount. A location can have plenty of people on the roster and only one who can close. Holiday staffing has to be planned the way it breaks down, one location, role and shift at a time.
This plan is for operators running many locations. Its timeline counts back from your first peak week, so it works wherever your rush falls, and every step still helps if you’re starting late.
Key takeaways
Plan holiday staffing location by location. A company-wide headcount can hide a store with one closer.
Count back from your first peak week, starting six weeks out.
Hire when hours are short. Cross-train when a skill is short.
Write the call-out plan down before peak, including when to borrow staff from a nearby location.
Review every location the week before peak, and give each open gap an owner.
How far ahead to plan holiday staffing: a timeline counted back from peak
Start with your first peak week. For most retail, restaurant and service operators, that’s Thanksgiving week, with a second stretch from the week before Christmas through New Year’s. Count back from the Monday it starts. Build each location’s gap list six weeks out, collect availability and start hiring five weeks out, and close time-off requests three weeks out. Two weeks out, post the first peak week’s schedule and have seasonal hires on supervised shifts. Run a readiness review the week before. The checklist at the end puts each milestone next to an owner.
The two-week posting milestone only binds you if an advance-notice law covers your locations (see step 6). Even if one doesn’t, it gives your team time to swap shifts before the week starts. If you have a second peak in late December, run the same timeline again. Most of the work carries over.
What if you have three weeks or less before peak?
If your first peak week is less than three weeks out, compress the timeline. Build the gap list first (step 1) and set a firm cutoff for any remaining time-off requests. Then work the shifts where a gap would leave no qualified closer or supervisor on duty, using volunteers and cross-trained backups, since a new hire may not be ready in time. Run the readiness review in the last few days before peak, and use the full timeline for the late-December weeks.
What if your peak is January?
For gyms and fitness studios, late December is often quieter, and the rush comes with the new year. The same plan works about four weeks later. Settle time off for the holidays, then hire and train for early January.
1. Build a coverage forecast and gap list for each location
Pull each location’s busiest weeks from last season, by week and by daypart: transactions or appointments, next to the hours you scheduled. For a location that opened since then, borrow the pattern from a similar site. Note anything that will change traffic this year, like a new promotion or road construction out front. Then look for signs coverage fell short, like overtime that kept repeating, missed breaks or closing tasks left for the morning crew. Ask each manager what got pushed off last December and why.
Count the work that doesn’t ring the register. Opening and closing checks, cleaning, restocking and shift handoffs still need someone during a rush. If two people are serving customers while a third runs the opening checklist, you have two people of service coverage and one who’s spoken for.
Then set a minimum for each critical role on each peak shift, such as a shift lead, a closer or a certified technician, and compare it with the people who can actually do that work. Ten names on a roster won’t tell you who can open, close or run a shift alone. Keep a simple gap list for each location: date, shift, role, the coverage you need, the coverage you’ve confirmed, the next action and one owner. That list drives the rest of this plan.
Last season’s call-outs belong on the list too. Where missed shifts clustered by location, role and day of week tells you where to line up backups first. Then turn the gap list into daily hour targets for each location’s holiday weeks, so schedulers have a number to build against.
In Woven: You see where to line up backups first. Call In Insights show where missed shifts clustered by location, position and day of week, and a labor plan sets daily hour targets for each location.
2. Set one holiday time-off deadline and your blackout dates
Announce a single request deadline for every location and say how you’ll settle ties. First submitted, a rotation from last year, or seniority all work. Pick one, write it down and apply it the same way everywhere, so a manager in one market makes the same call as a manager in another. Announce the date every decision will be shared, too, so nobody waits on a slow trickle of approvals.
Then set limits. Decide how many people in each role can be off on the same day, and block out the few dates you can’t spare anyone, like the Saturday before Christmas. When two of a location’s only closers ask for the same day, add it to the gap list. Cross-training or a volunteer may solve it.
In Woven: Fewer requests to untangle by hand. Time Off blocks requests on block-out dates or inside the minimum notice period, warns when too many people in the same position and location ask for the same day, and shows team members how many days they’ve used.
Two cautions. A request deadline doesn’t override protected leave or accommodation requests, so give managers a clear route to HR when a request falls into that territory. And a vacation blackout shouldn’t block legally protected sick leave. Our post on sick-time policies across locations covers how to keep the two apart.
3. Collect holiday availability before you build schedules
Before anyone builds a holiday week, ask every team member which holiday dates they can’t work, whether they want extra hours, and whether they’d pick up a shift at a nearby location. The people who want more hours are your first coverage list, and asking early means you hear from them before they make other plans.
Some availability changes for the whole season, like a college student home for break or a parent whose kids are out of school. Record those changes before anyone builds a holiday week, so schedules don’t rest on last month’s availability. To build faster, start each location’s holiday weeks from a prior week or a saved template and adjust from there. If you’re still comparing tools, our guide to the best employee scheduling app for multi-location teams covers what to look for.
In Woven: Conflicts get caught before the schedule goes out. Team members submit their availability, including on-call times if you turn that on, and a manager accepts it. A shift that conflicts with accepted availability or approved time off can warn or be blocked, and holiday weeks can start from a prior week or a saved template.
4. Hire seasonal staff for hours, cross-train for skills
Go down each location’s gap list and match each gap to a fix. If a location has enough people but only one closer, train a second closer, because a new hire won’t be ready in time. If the hours themselves are short, hire. Some gaps close with volunteers who asked for extra hours, and a few may need a shorter day or a paused service.
Make each cross-training assignment specific: who learns which backup role, who trains them, and the date a manager will watch them do it. Use the same training program at every location, with local notes where a site works differently.
For new hires, work back from the first shift they need to run on their own. A seasonal hire needs paperwork done, paid training on your standards and a couple of supervised shifts before they’re much help on a December Saturday. Counting back from your first peak week, that means starting to hire about five weeks out, so new hires are through paperwork and on supervised shifts two weeks before peak. Our employee onboarding checklist covers the first week in detail. Three rules to plan around:
Form I-9: USCIS requires Section 2 within three business days of the day employment begins. Someone who starts Monday needs it done by Thursday.
Training time: under the Department of Labor’s hours-worked rules, training is paid time unless it’s outside normal hours, voluntary, not job-related and no other work happens during it. Budget the hours and schedule onboarding on the clock.
Teen workers: under federal rules, 14- and 15-year-olds can work up to 3 hours on a school day and 18 in a school week (8 and 40 when school is out). Outside summer they can’t work after 7 p.m., which rules out most closing shifts. Many states set tighter limits.
Sign people off by watching them work. Before a seasonal hire or a cross-trained backup covers a shift alone, have a manager watch them do the role’s core tasks and note what they still need to practice. Until then, count them as supervised help on the schedule, and keep them off the independent-coverage line of your gap list.
In Woven: Less paperwork to chase. New hires sign W-4 and I-9 forms on their phone, and the signed copies are filed to their record. Learning paths can be assigned by position, and the time clock raises minor-labor alerts and can block a clock-in for a minor.
5. Plan call-out coverage for the days that will go wrong
Someone will call out on your busiest Saturday. Plan for it now. Name a backup for each role at each location, keep an on-call list, and decide who approves a pickup when the general manager is the one who’s out.
Write the call-out sequence down: who the manager contacts first, how long they wait for an answer, and when it goes to the district manager. Borrow from a nearby location only when that location stays covered and the person knows the work, or one short location becomes two.
Count the travel and the hours. Under the same hours-worked rules, travel from one job site to another during the workday is work time. For nonexempt staff working for the same employer, the FLSA counts overtime by workweek, so 30 hours at one location and 15 at another is 45 hours, five of them overtime. Make sure payroll adds up hours across locations.
Decide what a manager may shorten or pause when nobody is available, and who approves it, so the GM working a double stays the last resort. Then test the plan once: a closing supervisor calls out on a Saturday and the nearest location is short too. Our business continuity plan template has a format for recording those decisions.
Let team members trade or give away shifts with a manager’s approval, so a closing shift doesn’t end up with someone who can’t close.
In Woven: Open shifts get filled without a round of texts. A call-in from the app turns the shift into an open shift. With coverage alerts on, coworkers volunteer and the manager picks who works it. Swaps and giveaways go through manager approval.
Watch hours as well as gaps. Holiday weeks are where overtime and short turnarounds pile up, and a worn-out team in December shows up in January turnover. Check each schedule against your overtime rules, minimum rest between shifts and hour targets before it goes out, and set holiday pay rates and dates once for the whole company.
In Woven: Overtime and rest problems show up before the week is posted. Schedules are checked against your overtime, minimum rest and labor plan rules before they’re published, each set to warn or block, and holiday pay multipliers and dates are set once.
6. Check your advance-notice scheduling rules
This section is general information, not legal advice. Rules change, so check the official sources for the places you operate.
Some cities and states have fair workweek or predictive scheduling laws that require certain employers to post schedules in advance, in several cases 14 days ahead. If one applies to you, each peak week’s schedule has to be out two weeks before that week starts, so time-off requests need to close before then.
These laws usually apply only to specific industries and to employers above a size threshold, so many service businesses fall outside them. Where they do apply, changing a posted schedule can carry extra pay, and some add a premium when a closing shift is followed too closely by an opening one. Start with the official pages for Seattle, Chicago, Oregon, Philadelphia, New York City and Los Angeles County, check whether your state or city has passed anything newer, and confirm with employment counsel.
7. Tell every location the same thing at the same time
Send one message from HQ with the dates, the time-off deadline, how holiday pay works and who to call when something goes wrong. Send a reminder before each deadline. When every location hears it at once, no manager has to explain a policy they heard secondhand. If you run a franchise system, our guide to franchise management software covers tools that get the same dates and standards to every franchisee.
A few days later, ask a few people at each location where to find the holiday schedule and call-out process. If they can’t, send it again.
In Woven: Every location hears the same thing at once. Messages go to the locations and positions they apply to, with scheduled reminders, and publishing the holiday schedule notifies everyone on it.
If your holiday policy needs a sign-off, our guide to the handbook acknowledgement process covers how to collect one.
How to run a pre-season readiness review
In the week before your first peak week, have each location manager walk a district or regional lead through their gap list, holiday schedules and backup plan. Check that every opening and closing shift has a qualified person and a backup, that trainees are counted as supervised help, and that holiday hours and the call-out process are posted where staff can see them. Check equipment too: preventive maintenance done, critical equipment inspected and emergency repair contacts confirmed. A machine that fails on a peak Saturday pulls staff off the floor as well.
Mark each location ready, action needed or blocked, and give anything open an owner and a date. Keep it location by location, because one company-wide readiness score can hide a store with no Saturday closer. For the rest of your pre-holiday list, see the Q4 readiness checklist.
Holiday staffing checklist for multi-location operators
Copy this into whatever your managers already use, put a name next to each owner and add a status column. The timing counts back from your first peak week.
When | Action | Owner |
|---|---|---|
6 weeks out | Build a gap list for every location, with one owner per gap | Location manager, reviewed by district manager |
6 weeks out | Send every location the time-off deadline, tie rule and blackout dates | Operations lead |
6 weeks out | Set the route for protected leave and accommodation requests to HR | HR lead |
5 weeks out | Collect availability and an extra-hours list from every team member | Location manager |
5 weeks out | Start hiring for hour gaps and assign cross-training for skill gaps, each with a sign-off date | Location manager |
3 weeks out | Close holiday time-off requests and share decisions on the announced date | Location manager |
2 weeks out | Seasonal hires through paperwork (I-9 Section 2 within three business days of their start) and on paid training | Location manager and HR |
2 weeks out | Post the first peak week’s schedule, if a 14-day notice rule applies | Location manager |
2 weeks out | A backup per role, an on-call list and a written call-out sequence | Location manager |
2 weeks out | Confirm payroll adds each person’s hours across locations for overtime | Payroll lead |
Before you build | Set the holiday pay multiplier and holiday dates | Operations or payroll lead |
Each week | Before the schedule goes out, check overtime, rest and teen-hour limits | Scheduler |
1 week out | Readiness review, location by location, including equipment | District manager |
During peak | Post each week two weeks before it starts | Location manager |
Week after peak | Note what broke while it’s fresh | District manager |
Back to that Friday in December
Run the same day with the prep work done. The three Saturday requests were settled weeks ago by a rule everyone saw. The seasonal hires finished their paperwork weeks before the rush, and the newest closer was signed off the week before. When someone calls out for tomorrow’s close, the shift goes up as an open shift, a coworker who asked for extra hours takes it, and the manager approves it from the floor. That’s what a plan set weeks ahead buys: the busiest weeks run on systems instead of heroics.
In the first week of January, write down what broke, which call-outs repeated, and how many hours your managers worked. Manager hours are where holiday strain hides, and next year’s plan starts from that list. Our piece on quiet cracking covers why.
Holiday staffing FAQ
How early should you start holiday scheduling for multiple locations?
About six weeks before your first peak week, which for most operators is Thanksgiving week. Close time-off requests three weeks out, and post schedules two weeks out if an advance-notice law applies. Starting later still works if you compress the steps and cover the riskiest shifts first.
How do you handle competing holiday time-off requests fairly?
Pick one tie rule, such as first submitted, a rotation or seniority, publish it with the deadline and use it at every location. Cap how many people per role can be off on the same day.
Do predictive scheduling laws apply to my business?
It depends on where your locations are, your industry and your size. These laws exist in a handful of cities and states and usually cover specific industries above an employee-count threshold, so check each place you operate and confirm with employment counsel. This is general information, not legal advice.
How many seasonal employees should each location hire?
Take last year’s peak-week hours at each location, subtract what your current team can cover after approved time off, and divide by the weekly hours a seasonal hire will realistically work. Add a margin for call-outs. If the gap is a skill, like closing, cross-train first.
Does cross-training help with holiday staffing shortages?
Yes, when the gap is a skill. If a location has enough people but only one closer, training a second is faster than hiring. When you borrow cross-trained staff from another site, count travel between sites as hours worked.
What should a holiday call-out policy include?
One way to call out that reaches the manager, a named backup for each role, an on-call list, a written escalation sequence and who approves pickups when the GM is out. Share it in writing before peak season.
See how Woven handles time off, coverage and schedules across every location. Book a demo, or explore Woven for people teams.
