Working excessive hours will negatively impact job performance and cause costly mistakes.
Recent news reports highlight concerns over high-pressure working conditions and 100-hour working weeks throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taking time out to use annual leave entitlement is healthy. Not only does it allow employees to rest and re-energise, but it can also increase motivation and help work more efficiently.
As a business owner, you are legally required to encourage your employees to take their holiday entitlement and reduce the outstanding annual leave amount at the end of the year.
Having your staff build up too much annual leave and not spread their holiday over the year is an operational issue. The end of year rush for holiday bookings can leave your workplace under-resourced. Disgruntled employees and increased workloads due to multiple absences will make for an unhappy work environment.
Here are our practical tips for managing annual leave procedures.
Have a clear policy
Outline how your annual leave processes work clearly. Include any carry-forward rules and advise a limit for how many days can be carried over.
Some companies have discounts on travel and accommodation bookings as part of their employee benefits package. Ensure these guidelines are available.
Speak with your managers to ensure that hand-over procedures are in place before employees go away.
Be proactive and communicate
Don’t wait until you near the end of your holiday year before reviewing whether or not employees have used their annual leave. Send regular reminders to your employees to take their statutory holiday entitlement and outline how many days’ leave they have outstanding.
Create a working environment that cultivates discussions around holidays openly and honestly.
Implement a self-service HR system
Throw away the excel spreadsheets and paper forms to manage holiday allowances. Using a cloud-based HR system can help make the requesting and booking of annual leave easy, as well as providing your business with a central, streamlined process.
Subject to any travel restrictions, ask your employees to include details of their holiday destinations with their request. Allow time for a quick discussion about potential travel restrictions and their impact in advance of their annual leave.
Using a cloud-based HR management system can help you and your employees manage their holiday entitlement with ease. Our software allows you to manage your teams wherever you are in the world, allowing you more time to focus on your business instead of administrative tasks.
If you would like to arrange a demo of our cloud-based HR software or have any queries surrounding annual leave processes or policies, please get in touch with Bal Dhesi today.
