We all know how much annual leave is important in order to keep your employees happy and well-rested. We also know that the previous year was nothing but the ultimate test for key employees who’ve stayed in the front lines to keep everything running.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, key workers who had not had the chance to use up some or all of their accrued holiday leave had the option to carry over up to 4 weeks of unused holidays into the next two years.
With the lockdown restrictions being loosened, employers will be facing an increase of annual leave requests and along with these, a probable staffing bottleneck. A good approach and organisation can easily overcome this and here are a few tips:
- Have a bespoke annual leave policy, establishing an approach on annual leave and set out any restrictions which would highly impact the workflow, or set out specific dates when holiday must be taken (i.e., You’re closing business for Christmas holidays).
- Limit the number of employees that can go on leave at the same time.
- Share the annual leave calendar bookings amongst the employees: This way, they’ll be informed on who’s on leave and when, so they can organise and distribute work accordingly.
- Ask employees to provide notice when requesting annual leave: this will give you a heads up or you’ll have time to refuse a leave request if a valid reason appears.
- Be proactive in keeping track of annual leave used. This way you’ll have better insight of the annual leave your employees have left, and how many are holding on to it, so you’ll be able to avoid any staff shortage by planning it out with them.
