Allocating Annual Leave Fairly at Christmas

Can you believe it is only 10 weeks to Christmas. If they haven’t already, employees will soon be asking for time off over the Christmas/New Year period. If it is ‘business as usual’ at your workplace over the holiday season, you will appreciate how much of a headache approving leave at Christmas can be, and how difficult it is to please everyone.

10 tips for managing leave during the holiday season.

1. Check your HR policies. Firstly check whether your organisation has a workplace policy for approving leave and make sure you and your staff are familiar with it.
2. Implement a leave application procedure. Apply a consistent method of requesting leave for all staff. If you don’t have a process, create one. Good record keeping reduces the potential for complaints about unfair treatment.
3. Determine how many staff you need over Christmas. Decide on the minimum number of staff you need to cover the workload, allowing for any sick leave or emergencies that might occur. Investigate options like borrowing staff from other departments or using temps to allow some of your hard working team to have time off.
4. Establish a set of guidelines and criteria for how you will allocate leave for Christmas. For example:

• Only permit 1 person on leave at a time
• Limit each person to 5 days leave during December/January
• Place a ban on all leave for peak workload days
• Approve leave on a first-in first-served basis
• Implement a rotating system in the team eg. If you had leave at Christmas last year you can’t have it this year
• Use a sweepstakes to decide
• Only permit staff with accrued entitlements to apply

Admittedly some of these rules may not work in every situation. Consult with your team to find out what they think is a fair way to allocate leave. And once you have your criteria, get some HR advice to make sure your process is fair and reasonable and doesn’t disadvantage particular groups of people.

1. Application window. Set a date for when you will begin accepting Christmas leave applications as well as a deadline for when applications will close. It is no use looking at Christmas leave applications in January if you won’t know how many staff you will need until closer to the time.
2. Communicate your requirements, deadlines and guidelines. Ensure your people are informed of the business requirements over Christmas, the leave application deadlines, and the criteria you will use to approve leave. Write down these guidelines and make them easy to access so that staff can refer to them.
3. Use a wall planner or shared electronic calendar so staff can see what leave has already been approved – before they apply. Not only does this promote transparency, it also encourages the team to work things out and negotiate between themselves when there are conflicts.
4. Respond quickly to leave applications. You don’t want to get into a situation where a staff member goes ahead and books flights and accommodation (because you are taking so long to get back to them) only to be disappointed when you refuse their leave.
5. Monitor leave entitlements throughout the year and encourage individuals to take accrued leave at times other than Christmas.
6. Make Christmas at work fun. Bring in food to share, decorate, relax the dress standards, do a coffee run for your team – anything to make it a pleasant time to be at work.

Wishing peace and goodwill to all those leaders keeping this nation running while the rest of us laze on the beach and eat far too much over the Christmas holidays.