Public Holiday Planning For a Shared Service Center

I thought this is a good topic to discuss since Chinese New Year is just around the corner.

Malaysia has one of the highest number of public holidays in the world. This present a challenge for the shared services industry or any businesses that need to remain operational during public holidays.

I have seen quite a number of different variations of how service providers plan for public holidays and have summarized them below.

1. Follow local government and company gazetted public holidays - Staff is required to work on public holidays. They are compensated accordingly when they are scheduled to work on these days. 
2. Follow the supported region public holidays - Staff work according to the public holidays for the region that they support. They are compensated if they happen to work on days that fall on local government and company gazetted public holidays. 
3. No public holidays - Staff work all the days. Local government and company gazetted public holidays are added to the staff's annual leave. No further compensation. 

I left the compensation part vague as companies compensate differently. Some compensate using monetary while others compensate by giving leave-in-lieu or annual leave. Do note that leave-in-lieu or annual leave presents a challenge on its own in that staff tends to accumulate far too many days than they can clear without impacting operation.

Another challenge is scheduling staff to work on public holidays or scheduling staff who wish to take leave during public holidays for Option 3. I find that having guidelines help to avoid frantic planning at the last minute and calls of unfairness. I especially like guidelines that empower the staff to make scheduling decisions.

From a service provider's perspective, there is no best option. It depends on the service provider's needs and ability. For example, not all service providers are ready to deal with the financial burden of dishing out monetary compensation.

The staff's perspective is just as subjective. Some like to have the same public holidays as their family members and friends while others like the flexibility of Option 3.

I, like all people, like to have more public holidays. However, if you look a bit deeper, public holidays increase the cost of doing business. I believe there needs to be a balance between having sufficient public holidays to celebrate our multicultural background and for us, the shared services industry in Malaysia, to remain competitive in the global marketplace.

Footnote: 

This blog post discusses share service centers that operate on an 8x5 basis. The options gets more complicated for shared service centers that operate 24x7 as we will have to deal with working on weekends, working more than the regular 8 hours and working odd hours.