Written by Emily Gent | 5th April 2023

The clocks have gone forward and we’re seeing the first signs of Spring, which means many employees will be keen to get their holiday requests in.

School holidays and the extra bank holiday for the Coronation this year could lead to an influx in requests, and managing holidays isn’t always easy.

Here’s some tips to help you establish a process that reduces conflict for you and your team.

Have a clear annual leave policy

Step one is to make sure you’re managing annual leave fairly by having a clear, detailed policy. As well as helping to avoid confusion, it will ensure everyone is made aware of their holiday entitlement.

For advice around bank holiday entitlement for this year’s Coronation, read our blog.

Employees who work a five-day week must receive at least 28 days paid annual leave a year as their statutory entitlement. This is the equivalent of 5.6 weeks of holiday. Having this in writing avoids issues down the line for both you and your people.

As well as statutory entitlement, your policy should cover your approvals process and how much advance notice you require. How to calculate the pro-rata entitlement for employees who work part-time could be included as well as the maximum number of consecutive days someone is allowed to book at one time.

Having a documented policy means there is a reference point for your managers and employees, so you can also include periods of when leave either cannot or must be taken (e.g., you may not be able to approve leave for everyone during peak periods for your business, such as Christmas).

Don’t forget to consider how employees make requests, in your policy. You may have an automated system, an online form or calendar that sends requests to managers – whatever it is, employees should know how to use it and managers how to review them.

Allocate leave on a first come, first served basis

Operating a first come, first served policy is usually the fairest way to manage a situation where multiple employees might want to take holiday at the same time. Make sure this is clearly indicated in your annual leave policy, so that all of your employees know they need to request leave as far in advance as possible.

If you’re often inundated with multiple requests at busy times, it might be worth considering a rotation system, particularly if you have lots of team members requesting school holidays off, to ensure a system that is fair to everyone and to avoid any disagreements.

Plan ahead

As annual leave requests come in, consider the notice period. Has the employee given a week’s notice? Two, three or four? The more notice period you have, the more you can plan for their absence. One of the key points in your annual leave policy should be adequate notice and you should encourage your employees to plan ahead and get their requests in as early as possible.

If you have sufficient notice of employees on holiday over the summer, and it will probably stretch from the beginning of July right through to mid-September, you can plan events or spread workload around these months. For example, if you have an employee off every week during that time and operating as a skeletal workforce, adding additional workload on those remaining employees may not be ideal.

Take care when turning down requests

Your employees should understand it’s not guaranteed that their holiday request will be granted. If a request is turned down, make sure line managers know they have to give a clear policy-backed explanation for their decision, e.g., there are too many people off already or they didn’t give enough notice.

Of course, you should take into consideration why a holiday request is made at short notice and use your discretion for each employee.

Ensure that any decision made in relation to granting or declining holiday requests is done in accordance with contracts and your annual leave policy, to avoid any discriminatory issues.

To maintain good staff relationships, and boost morale, we suggest you approve holiday requests as much as reasonably possible.

For advice on how to develop your existing annual leave policy, or to start from scratch, or for any HR Outsourcing enquiries please contact our team at info@realityhr.co.uk.