April for fools…

Well aren’t we glad that is all over?  Yes we all enjoyed the royal wedding (free days drinking) followed by May Day (free days recovery) and that was after Easter (see previous!!).   Companies up and down the country had an unprecedented amount of holiday forms requesting the “take 3, have 11 days off”.  However what impact has April had on the business world? 

Even those that were left in the office had an extra “Christmas week” to catch up on admin and that pile of shredding (normally reserved for said Christmas week!).  So was there any actual business conducted in that crazy month?  Well, we are told that barbeque sales went through the roof along with that of burgers, cheap champagne and of course the patriotic bunting!  Pubs, restaurants and ice cream vans did very well in April too.  So certain ‘business to consumer’ companies are definitely not complaining.

However if your organisation is predominantly ‘business to business’ do you have a right to moan?  Sales were undoubtedly down and overall productivity was definitely affected.  Employees who did turn up for some of the month were not firing on all cylinders.  Decision makers were either at the beach or they decided that they would revisit everything after the bank holidays!   

We anticipate that now it is all over we can all look forward to a bumper May!  Like they say in football these thing tend to even themselves out over the season don’t they!  Yes, it is quite likely that some businesses were negatively impacted in April however we all got a cracking British tan, to eat like kings and were well and truly rested.

So, should we complain or should “crazy April” be repeated every year…??