With summer holidays on the horizon, employers are likely to be dealing with an increase in annual leave requests.

Let’s look at some tips for managing annual leave without disrupting business operations, while also giving your employees the well-deserved break they need.

Take steps to encourage employees to book their annual leave

This can help to avoid too many requests being submitted later in the year which can be difficult to manage if your business is already at its maximum annual leave caps and/or if they can’t be accommodated due to business demands. For example, during the run-up to Christmas.

Assess how much annual leave your employees have left to take

Now that we are halfway through the year, this is a good time for you to assess how much annual leave your employees have left to take in the current holiday year and remind staff to book any remaining annual leave entitlement. This is particularly important if your holiday allowance runs from January to December.

Send out reminders

It’s important that employees take their annual leave entitlement for their health and wellbeing. So, sending a reminder letter to all staff can help to ensure that they don’t forget to use their full entitlement.

The letter should be sent out towards the end of your annual leave year, and it should include your policy regarding carrying over any remaining holiday allowance to the next year and remind staff of the process for requesting annual leave.

You can refuse annual leave requests

Remember that you can refuse annual leave requests in line with business needs, but you should make sure that the process for handling conflicting requests is fair and non-discriminatory, such as granting requests on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.

With, these annual leave tips you and your employees are sure to find the perfect balance between work and play.

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