Managing Vacation Requests

Summer is upon us and with that, perfect weather, kids out of school, and people desiring to get away from their daily routines. As the employer, you must juggle the inevitable requests for time off while at the same time, ensuring you don’t impact productivity beyond what your business can bear.

It can be difficult to find the balance between being flexible for your employees while ensuring your business has enough coverage. So, to make this a little easier, let’s look at 5 ways you can more effectively manage time off requests.

Create a Plan

To fairly manage your employees’ vacation requests, you should have an organized plan in place. Otherwise, you run the chance of unfair procedures occurring.

Your plan should include restricting any time periods where heavy workloads are anticipated, how long in advance must employees request time off and what is the maximum amount of time off that can be taken at one time. Additionally be sure employees know how to request time off and who to request to. If you have this built in your payroll platform, time off requests can be streamlined. (Ask your rep!)

Communicate your policy

As early as possible during peak times of the year, be sure to communicate your vacation and time off policy with your employees.

Don't have a time off policy? Check our blog on why you should.

During the hire process, as part of the handbook and policy explanation, let employees know about your policy and procedure for requesting time off. Without a clearly communicated policy, employees may be apprehensive about asking for or taking vacation time. Or employees might assume they can take time off whenever because they are unaware of your vacation policy.

Prioritize requests

As an employer, decide how you plan to prioritize multiple requests. At some point, you will likely have more than one employee request a specific time period. So, how do you determine who gets the vacation time off?

Two common methods employers use to prioritize vacation requests include on first-come, first-served basis or seniority.

When you prioritize requests on a first-come, first-served basis, the employee who submits their request first is the one who receives the time off. When you have multiple requests that are all equally valid and conflicting, you may use seniority to determine who gets the time off. If those are not complete enough, you can prioritize by department, but be sure to have a demonstratable reason as to why.

Plan ahead for busy and slow seasons

Do you have periods that vacations are not allowed? We do here at Infinium and it coincides with our year end processes between Christmas and February.

 

Every business has busy seasons where they can’t afford to have several employees all out on vacation at the same time. To avoid letting vacations wreak havoc on your small business during your busy seasons, plan ahead. You should decide whether or not you will block out certain weeks to be sure all hands are on deck. Encourage employees to take vacations during your slower seasons.

Track future and past requests

This last tip can help you better manage future vacation requests. It’s important to ensure you track requests and vacations taken to be sure you are fairly allowing all employees to spread their vacation time out through the year.

Tracking previous requests and vacation time off can help you spot problems and patterns. And, looking at past requests can give you an idea of which employees request the most time off and which employees rarely request vacation time. In our isolved payroll platform, you can actually create a time-off calendar so you can see your whole team’s vacation history and future month by month.

Looking for a way to streamline your time off request process? Infinium’s payroll platform lets you streamline and automate the time off process and allow employees to request time off online where they will be able to see the entire team calendar so they don’t stack their time off request when others are taking time off.

Be sure to talk to your payroll rep about streamlining your time off request process. If you’re not an Infinium client, maybe it’s time we had a conversation! Click the link below to request a consultation.