Eight tips to help you organise employee vacations effectively

Organising and managing employee vacations can be complex, especially if you have a large workforce, and during popular periods such as Christmas and school holidays. However, to make it easier, you just need effective management and the right supporting tools.

Vacation management: What are the key factors to be considered?

To help you, we recommend you follow the following 8 tips:

1. Holiday and Absence Policy

One of the most fundamental aspects of effective time-off management is establishing a clear and detailed annual leave policy. All existing and new employees should be made aware of it, and it should be included within the employment contract. A clear policy helps you manage employee time off effectively so that any absences don’t have a negative impact on productivity levels.

It should be legally compliant and cover all the critical factors involved with planning holidays including each person’s holiday entitlement, the specific period over which holidays are calculated (calendar or financial year), how much notice is required when requesting holiday time, the maximum number of consecutive days permitted, any periods during which holiday cannot be taken and whether accrued holiday not taken can be rolled over to the following year.

2. Holiday Calendar

A holiday calendar that covers the whole year makes it easier to manage the whole process, avoid any potential conflicts and helps employees plan their vacations and days off well in advance.

Whether you use a wall chart, an Excel spreadsheet or an on-line calendar, you will have an immediate picture of what holidays have been booked and by whom, and what dates are available. It means that both management and employees can immediately have a clear picture of the situation and can then make their own requests without compromising the organisation’s ability to carry out its role effectively.

It can also be used to highlight busy periods when requests should be restricted. During quiet periods of business activity, offering incentives such as a holiday bonus may encourage employees to take their vacations when it will have the least effect on business activities.

3. Design a process for requesting holidays

It’s very important to establish a clear and easy procedure for employees to request vacations. It should explain how requests for holidays should be made, how far in advance the request should be made and what happens should there be a conflict. In some cases this will be via a paper request form, but software is available which allows self-service requests to be made. This speeds up the process so employees can request the holiday periods they want and, provided it fits within the company policy, they will be granted.

4. Ensure business continuity

Holidays are important, but so is ensuring the business continues to work smoothly even when employees are on vacation. To minimise the effect on the company, you can assign temporary replacements or redistribute tasks amongst the remaining employees.

Depending on the requirements of your business you can do either or both, but it is important that you include contingencies so that everything goes smoothly and your company’s activities continue seamlessly.

5. Communicate

When employees request vacations, it is important to communicate all decisions clearly and expediently. This ensures employees have sufficient time to arrange any bookings (hotels, flights etc.) they need to make. Should the vacation not be granted it then gives them time to make alternative arrangements.

6. Review and update the plan

Unforeseen events may arise, or many employees may want to take the same weeks, so it is important to review and update the plan regularly. This will ensure holiday arrangements work effectively both for the employees and the business overall.

7. Create teams and share responsibilities

Working as a team can be a very positive approach for the company because it prevents all the pressure and responsibilities falling on one person’s shoulders. Delegating holiday management to a team means that even when key people are on vacation or suffer any absence, everything will continue to run smoothly.

8. Use good HR management software

To organise and administer employees' vacations successfully, the best and easiest approach is to use HR management software. Kelio provides a versatile system that can be tailored to the needs of each organisation and facilitate the management of holidays and absences. It incorporates a self-service function so employees can make holiday requests easily and they can also see how much holiday they have accrued and how many days are remaining. It allows supervisors to receive and deal with requests immediately so speeding up the whole process and just makes everything so much easier!

How to simplify the management of employee vacations?

Following these eight tips will make it much easier for you to manage employee vacations. However, the reasons for absences can be very varied, because in addition to vacations, absences can be caused by sickness, medical appointments, accidents or domestic issues amongst others.

To prevent holidays and unforeseen events adversely affecting your business, you need software that helps you manage staff absences efficiently. It is the most effective tool to help you plan, manage and control staff vacations and avoids adversely affecting the running of your organisation.

Kelio provides you with everything you need to manage employee vacations successfully. You can easily configure it to suit the specific needs of your organisation. It provides you with an accurate record of all holidays and absences, and you can extract absentee data in a matter of a few clicks.

Kelio means managing vacations will be so much easier in the future.