Half your finance team is off in August. A supplier invoice needs approving. A key customer is chasing a delivery. Sound familiar?
The summer months bring a distinct set of pressures to UK businesses, from staff shortages and supply chain disruptions to flagging morale and unpredictable weather. The good news is that many of these challenges are manageable with the right planning, processes, and systems in place.
In this post, we take a practical look at the main causes of summer inefficiency and what you can do as a business to stay productive.
What can cause inefficiency and delays during the summer?
The summer disrupts UK businesses in several interconnected ways, but how much you feel the impact depends on a range of factors.
Staff and People
Annual leave requests spike significantly during the summer months. With children out of school, parents must balance childcare commitments alongside work. Yet despite a reduced workforce, customers still expect the same level of service.
For businesses that thrive in summer (hospitality, retail, leisure), increased trade may require additional temporary staff. Failing to plan ahead for this can lead to agency delays, gaps in coverage, and increased pressure on the team members who remain.
Productivity is another genuine challenge. Research shows that over 60% of employees report reduced efficiency during hot weather, with many losing valuable working hours each day. Yet despite this, only 49% of workers say their employer takes steps to reduce the impact of heat on productivity. A further 83% believe employers should take increasingly hot weather more seriously as both a productivity and wellbeing issue.
Supply chain and Resources
The UK’s transport infrastructure and its summer heatwaves are a poor combination. The July 2022 heatwave illustrated this starkly: rail services were disrupted and roads, flights, and the London Underground all faced cascading delays.
For businesses running just-in-time logistics, even a single day’s disruption to road or rail can have significant downstream consequences on goods and the movement of staff and customers.
Global supply chains are equally exposed. Drought and flooding have disrupted production of key commodities including coffee and cocoa, with world coffee prices rising by approximately 40% in 2024. Large food retailers, coffee chains, and manufacturers bear the heaviest impact given the volumes they handle.
Energy networks are not immune either. Extreme heat can cause infrastructure hubs to overheat and fail, adding further operational risk for businesses with high energy dependency.
What factors affect the impact your feel?
While the above challenges are universal, the impact is extremely individual. The key factors that determine your level of exposure include:
- Size of your business
- Location
- Sector
- Business setup and infrastructure
- Supplier base and geography
Two factors deserve particular attention: sector and supplier relationships.
Different sectors feel summer pressures in very different ways. Professional services and office-based businesses will primarily need to navigate annual leave and the general summer slump in productivity. Transport businesses, by contrast, must contend with the direct and severe effects of heat on the UK’s infrastructure network. Hospitality and retail businesses face a dual challenge: surging demand at the same time as staffing pressures peak.
For businesses with an extended supplier base, geopolitical and environmental factors halfway across the globe can have a direct impact on your operations. BDO research reveals that 29% of UK firms are grappling with significant supply chain challenges, with delayed deliveries and inventory shortages disrupting their ability to meet customer demand. Seasonal pressures only amplify existing cracks.
How to mitigate the issues you experience?
Much of what happens in summer is outside your control, the weather chief among them. So, let’s focus on what is within your control: your workforce, your systems, and your planning.
1. Create a Comfortable and Supportive Working Environment
A key driver of summer productivity is a working environment that helps people perform, both literally and figuratively. Practically speaking, this means ensuring access to air conditioning, fans, and hydration. On a broader level, it means making the day-to-day experience of working during summer as easy as possible.
- Simple summer perks can go a long way in lifting morale and reducing the summer slump:
- Early finish on Fridays during summer months
- On-site refreshments and occasional ice cream breaks
- Relaxed dress code during hot weather
- Flexible start and finish times to help with commutes or childcare
2. Plan Annual Leave Proactively
With a significant portion of your workforce using annual leave in a concentrated window, proactive planning is essential. To set yourself up for success:
- Require annual leave to be booked in advance, giving you time to plan for absences and arrange temporary cover
- Implement clear, structured handover processes when staff depart and return
- Use accessible, cloud-based systems such as Microsoft 365 (ensuring things are in shared drives) or Sage Intacct to ensure workflows continue even when key individuals are away
On that last point: one of the most common causes of summer inefficiency is knowledge locked in people’s heads or in systems that only they can access. When that person goes on holiday, everything stops. Tools like Sicon Approvals and Credit Hound Cloud allow authorisations to happen flexibly, so a manager on leave doesn’t become a bottleneck. Sage Intacct’s cloud-based design means the baton can be passed between team members with minimal friction, wherever they are.
3. Invest in Automation and Smart Systems
Good business systems are one of the highest-leverage investments you can make in summer resilience. Here’s where to focus:
- Automate manual tasks:
- A wide range of modern systems can now automate time-consuming manual processes such as invoice approvals, purchase order workflows, expense submissions, and stock reordering. Reducing reliance on manual input eases pressure on your team during busy or understaffed periods.
- Use cloud-based platforms:
- Cloud tools like Sage Intacct allow authorised team members to access and action work from anywhere, eliminating the risk of tasks stalling because someone is working remotely or out of the office.
- Leverage data analysis and AI forecasting:
- AI-powered tools can combine weather forecasts, local events, and consumer data to identify patterns and generate predictions. For hospitality businesses, this might mean accurately forecasting footfall and staffing needs. For energy and utilities companies, it can help predict infrastructure pressure and plan maintenance windows proactively.
4. Review Your Data and Supply Chain in Advance
The most resilient businesses don’t prepare for summer in June, they start months or years earlier. Reviewing historical data well in advance gives you the visibility to forecast accurately and act decisively.
- Aim to analyse at least the last two years of data across:
- Consumer demand and sales figures
- Staffing levels and absence patterns
- Inventory and stock movements
- Operational costs and expenses
- Supplier performance and lead times
With the right data, forecast accuracy rates above 85% are achievable. Tools like Microsoft Power BI or the reporting modules within Sage Intacct are excellent starting points for building this visibility.
On the supply chain side, recent disruptions have pushed 69% of UK firms to source more locally, with 25% now using only UK-based or nearby suppliers. Local sourcing reduces transit risk and lead times which is particularly valuable for businesses that rely on seasonal stock arriving on schedule.
Summer will always bring challenges for UK businesses. But the businesses that navigate it best are those who treat it less as an annual surprise and more as a known, plannable event.
By investing in the right systems, planning annual leave strategically, supporting your team through the hottest months, and reviewing your supply chain well in advance, you can keep efficiency high even when half the office is on a beach somewhere.
At PKF Smith Cooper Systems, we help businesses across the UK implement the tools and processes that make this possible. If you’d like to talk through how your current systems could better support your team this summer, we’d love to hear from you.
Written by: Priya Wileman, Marketing Project Manager at PKF Smith Cooper Systems
Last reviewed: June 2026
