Sleigh 2025: End of Year Shutdown/Checklist for Construction & Field Services

For HR and Admin departments in the UK construction and field services sectors, preparing for Christmas and New Year is key to smooth operations. With that, comes a long list of admin and end of year tasks around payroll, HR, compliance, safety and communication. We’ve done some digging on the most common end of year queries and how to address these, ready for a seamless shutdown and a strong start to the new year. 

Annual Leave & Rollover

New Year, New Leave. But how do you manage it? Is there a use it or lose it policy? Do you let staff carry over a set amount? There’s a lot to keep tabs on. Taking PTO is vital to employee wellbeing, engagement and productivity, but in 2023, less than 40% of UK adults took all of their annual leave allowance.So what do you do? Some organisations will run off a use it or lose it policy, encouraging employees to use all of their leave in the assigned leave year. But some will allow days to be carried over (example, a maximum of 5 days) which will be added to their leave for the following year. This might also be agreed as lieu days. However you operate, it’s important employees understand their entitlement and are kept in the loop. Gov.uk has lots of helpful guides on managing leave, laws and entitlements.

It’s also useful to utilise your Time and Attendance tool, like TimeKeeper, to track employees leave, calculations and rollover.

Communication & Cover

Unlike other businesses, Field Services will be active or on call during the festive period. That’s why it’s important to make sure everyone knows what is expected of them. Who will the emergency contacts be? Who is covering which days? What is the protocol if there’s an issue? Correct planning can help prevent service issues down the line, making sure the workload is evenly shared and everyone gets downtime.

Confirming contact details and availability ahead of time can make planning a little easier. Utilising a T&A or project management tool is also a great way to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Payroll & HR

In addition to leave, there are other HR topics that may need to be addressed. Confirming final payroll for the year and processing in time for any bank holidays. Employee annual reviews may take place at the end of the year too. This is also a good time to check employee contact and emergency contacts details are all up to date.

These are just a few of the queries that crop up towards the end of the year, but we made a downloadable checklist here with more tasks that may be overlooked.

Make your lists, check them twice, and prepare for a smooth transition into 2025.