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Filipinos love holidays; being deeply ingrained in our families and our culture, we celebrate every fiesta in our hometowns that we can.

In addition, our country has one of the longest Christmas seasons in the world.

Not all Filipino business owners, however, look forward to holidays. When work has to be done on such a day, owners would have to pay their employees extra depending on what’s provided by law—which eats into the operating budget.

Other owners are miffed that holidays cut into the precious time they have to work on a big job or produce a volume order, or when an important business meeting is postponed because of a suddenly-declared non-working day.

Working around holidays and long weekends, therefore, is a skill new entrepreneurs must learn before they sally forth with their business.

According to Lex Ledesma and Peter Kawsek, members of Entrepreneur’s panels of experts, it’s all a matter of planning and tweaking.

Kawsek, chief executive of Apo International Marketing Corp., a packaging and manufacturing company, says entrepreneurs can always expect at least 11 regular holidays in a year as provided by Republic Act 9492 .

Republic Act No. (“R.A.”) 9492 was passed in 2007, reflecting the practice of moving certain holidays on the Monday following the holiday. The new law makes the holidays “movable” to Mondays, except Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

The practice, dubbed as “holiday economics,” was aimed at encouraging economic activity from people traveling and vacationing during the prolonged holiday. The law however requires the President to issue a proclamation six months before the holiday concerned before the holiday could be moved to a Monday.

While some businessmen may complain about the law, saying that it hampers productivity and causes unnecessary delay in production, Kawsek says that such companies usually lack forward-planning and execution.

“R.A. 9492 just updated what businesses have been used to. It made holidays more predictable and benefits businesses by their ability to plan forward,” says Kawsek. “Companies like BPOs must have considered these holidays in their operational cost prior to startup. Hence, any added cost must be from unseen events, which is completely the opposite of the intention of R.A. 9492.”

To accommodate holidays, companies should prepare in advance by telling their employees to schedule their leaves to align with the holidays, says Ledesma. Ledesma, co-founder of The One School and the School of Fashion and the Arts, adds that companies that can’t adjust their production or work schedules to benefit from these holidays must undertake cost-saving strategies.

 “Some businesses have even experimented with having one day a week or two days a month when employees can work from home. I have seen some studies that seem to indicate these methodologies can sometimes lead to higher efficiency among employees, ”Ledesma says.

Kawsek is confident that real entrepreneurs use the holidays to their advantage by networking and brainstorming with business associates on such days.

He says: “Entrepreneurs are smart businessmen. They don’t stop thinking of their babies [businesses] even on holidays. Switching off is not their cup of tea.”