Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993 TAG: 9307030042
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: ALISO VIEJO, CALIF. LENGTH: Long
On occasion, Sigsbury, 35, also likes to step away from the morning crowds, scattered bread crumbs, coffee spills and 500-degree ovens.
"You work so hard, and you're so involved in the minutiae of the business, that you need to get a break once in a while and clear your head," he said.
Every entrepreneur dreams of earning enough to live a better life, burnished perhaps with a newer car, nicer home and vacation getaways. Trouble is, workplace demands often intrude. Scheduling conflicts make vacations hard, or even impossible, to arrange - particularly at smaller businesses.
"I haven't taken a vacation," acknowledged Bob Bacca, 35, who in March 1992 acquired El Toro Meats, an upscale butchery. "I want to all the time. But wanting and being able to is different."
Harvard University sociologist Juliet B. Schor says Americans are working nine hours more per year than they did 20 years ago. That works out to an extra month of labor over the course of two decades.
Schor, in her book, "The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure," says the average American enjoys just 16 1/2 hours of leisure time a week. She quotes one father as saying: "Either I can spend time with my family, or support them - not both."
The task, then, is to determine how to give employees time off and still meet productivity requirements. It's a formidable undertaking.
As an Army reservist, Sigsbury trains twice a year, most recently returning from three weeks in Thailand. He also likes to boogie board, bike competitively and camp. But when Sigsbury is gone, everyone - especially his partner, Brad Spector, 35 - must work harder.
"When you're as small as we are, you don't have a critical mass of employees," Spector said. "Anyone who goes away for a few days is a vital part of the organization . . . When we lose a person it really does impact how everyone else has to work. And everyone else has to pick up the slack."
That raises what logicians call "the prisoner's dilemma."
Based on the example of two prisoners who escape, only to be recaptured, the dilemma is how each prisoner will respond to the resulting duress.
Cooperation between the two prisoners - neither agrees to compromise the other - brings the largest common benefit, meaning the least additional prison time. But cooperation comes at some personal expense. If either of the prisoners fends entirely for himself, compromising the other, then the brunt of the additional prison time will shift to his cohort.
Small businesses with tiny staffs face variations of the prisoner's dilemma each day. They are hard pressed to accommodate employee requests for time off, much less the leisure requirements of an owner. Yet they must accommodate such demands to maintain organizational cohesion.
About 88 percent of all small private companies offer paid vacations, according to Washington, D.C.-based Employee Benefit Research Institute. According to the institute, time off represents 5.5 percent of payroll costs, or about 38 cents an hour for every hour worked. Managing such benefits and accompanying surges in work stress is an important element of an organization's continuing health.
Here are four casebook strategies designed to help managers deal with employee vacations and other interruptions in the workplace:
Partnering: Spector and Sigsbury, who own two Bagel Barons shops that employ about 10 workers, share every aspect of the workload. That ranges from baking to bookkeeping and greeting the public. They even trade stores each week to avoid specialization. That way whenever a problem comes up, either one can solve it.
"The key is a good working relationship - flexibility, communication," Sigsbury said.
Cross-training: At York's Ranch Market in Lake Forest, Calif., owner Byron Priestley, 29, makes sure his dozen employees are adept at every job.
"You may work in the deli, you may work in produce, you may work out at the grill, or you may check. I don't have to worry about it because everybody's cross-trained," he said.
Priestley hasn't had any time off since opening York's Ranch Market 15 months ago, but he's getting married soon. "That will force me to take a vacation," he said. Not that he's worried about the store in his absence.
"As long as you keep your people involved in the daily operation, they know what to do . . . If they ever need anything, they can look it up in a card file and call the vendor. We're on credit so we don't have to worry about writing a check. The only reason they'd notice me gone is they wouldn't see me."
Plan ahead: One-branch Cornerstone Bank in Mission Viejo, whose 10 employees administer $55 million in assets, begins scheduling vacations up to a year in advance.
"We have a master calendar that we have everybody review in November and December of the prior year to make sure we have coverage," Cornerstone President Ernest Casarez said.
"We post it in the employee staff room so everybody can see it. Then what they have to do is if there's a conflict with their vacation [schedule], they have to trade times or make arrangements with their supervisor.
"With a small company there isn't a lot of flexibility," Casarez said. "We can't have the whole staff gone in August, which is the No. 1 vacation month of the year."
Employ temporary personnel: Manpower Inc.'s Sue Foigelnan says layoffs have reduced the ability of smaller companies to adapt to workplace demands.
"Overall, companies have reduced their total number of staff," Foigelnan said. "So when people do go on vacation, or have medical leave, they use temporary services more, whereas before they may have been able to manage without."
One temporary strategy employed by McKesson Industries in Worcester, Mass., is to hire mothers of school-age children during the school year, then recruit high school students to fill those jobs during the summer.
If all else fails, consider Tobacco Barn owner Jim Allison's example. Allison, 66, said he sends his wife Norma on vacation every year. But as for himself: "I have recreated myself out. I'm not interested in [it] anymore . . . I look forward to work every morning the way some people like to go to the beach."
by CNB