During the summer months, it’s not unusual for a large number of staff to request time off work, especially due to the warmer weather and school summer holidays. For many employers, this increase in holiday can also coincide with an increase in seasonal demand, so how do employers combat this?
Summer annual leave requests should be handled the same as any other requests under the normal holiday procedure. This means that staff should submit their request in the usual way, for example using a holiday request form, and they are still required to give the required amount of notice.
Depending on the size of the workforce, it’s likely that employers will receive conflicting holiday requests during summer. Employers can prioritise requests so long as they have a fair and consistent way of doing this. Normal prioritisation methods include applying a first-come, first served basis as this is transparent and unlikely to cause any issues such as discrimination.
Employers can refuse holiday requests provided they give the correct notice of the refusal. Notice of refusal must be equal to the length of the holiday requested. This refusal should be for a genuine business reason, such as the limit on employees being off has been reached or that business demands require a certain number of staff present at this time.
Planning ahead will help all businesses when they reach this busy period of the year. Having a clear idea of business needs will allow employers to introduce holiday caps and minimum staff levels going forwards. Employees should also be provided with the holiday request procedure in advance of this time and a useful reminder that they should not make any holiday plans before having their requests approved is always a good idea.
Introducing a holiday planning system which allows other members of staff to see when holidays have been booked, either in their team or across the whole workforce, will also avoid the issue of receiving too many conflicting requests for the same period of time. It allows staff to plan their holidays proactively to ensure their request is approved and will cut down time spent dealing with competing requests.
