Sometimes the best business decision is not the most convenient one for the employees - life is full of tradeoffs.
That's very true, and sometimes the best business decision is one that favours staff retention over short term profit. Losing the experience and expertise of someone who's been in the company a while just because you can't manage your team well enough to get people trained to cover one another's vacation time is going to get expensive when people burn out and quit, not to mention the effect it'll have on staff morale and your business's reputation as a bad place to work (which has a knock-on effect on sales).
You're entirely right that a small business can't afford to have complete redundancy for every staff position - the appropriate strategy is to put well documented processes in place, with good handover management and proper knowledge sharing. Discouraging people from taking vacation time to the point where you'd only hire in countries where you can give your staff zero paid vacation days is not.
That's very true, and sometimes the best business decision is one that favours staff retention over short term profit. Losing the experience and expertise of someone who's been in the company a while just because you can't manage your team well enough to get people trained to cover one another's vacation time is going to get expensive when people burn out and quit, not to mention the effect it'll have on staff morale and your business's reputation as a bad place to work (which has a knock-on effect on sales).
You're entirely right that a small business can't afford to have complete redundancy for every staff position - the appropriate strategy is to put well documented processes in place, with good handover management and proper knowledge sharing. Discouraging people from taking vacation time to the point where you'd only hire in countries where you can give your staff zero paid vacation days is not.