There is an easy way to become proficient in holiday management. All you need is one solution - a holiday management system. And the best part is that it doesn’t have to be a separate tool. It can be a module within another essential platform.
Holiday management is easy in theory but can get complicated in practice. There is more to it than simply blocking off a couple of days in the calendar for an employee. Sometimes, it can take much balancing, shifting and calculations to ensure a holiday request doesn’t disrupt the entire business. Not to mention, the holiday request and approval process can get a little messy too, let alone taking care of working out everyone’s holiday accruals, carryovers and so on. But there is a way to make it all as easy as it theoretically is.
This is today’s topic - exploring a way to both speed up and smoothen your entire approach to holiday management. All you need for that is a single digital tool. What’s more, it’s often already included in some of your day-to-day solutions. All you need to do is set it up, use it and reap the benefits.
How Do You Manage Employee Holidays?
There are multiple ways to manage employee holidays. The old-school way is allocating each employee with colour and marking their time off on the calendar using it. The approach works digitally too. Some companies rely on spreadsheets, while others keep an eye on email threads. But all these approaches pale in front of the modern solution - the holiday management system.
While it still works by the same principle, it requires significantly less effort as it takes over many leave-related tasks. Additionally, it is centralised and offers visibility to the entire team, further aligning them in terms of planning collaborations.
Holiday Management System
As you must have guessed, the holiday management system and its benefits are the key topic of this article. Despite the belief that leave management is easy enough not to utilise additional tools, we want to discuss how putting one to use can enhance the processes. And how this can start a chain reaction.
Minimise Workflow Disruptions
One of the key benefits of a holiday management system is that it puts you in control. By giving a centralised view of your team’s availability as well as upcoming time off bookings, it allows you to plan ahead. This is crucial for every business, not just ones that deal with clients. Being left short on staff can bear serious consequences and set you back on both progress and finances. But you can turn the tide in your favour when you’re informed in advance.
Being in the loop with your team’s availability enables you to adjust your business operations in accordance with the workforce you have on hand. Instead of trying to scramble by the last second, you can strategically plan and allocate your resources ahead of time. This approach helps you ensure your projects don’t get derailed when one or more employees take time off. Additionally, this can be a key pointer when it comes to task prioritisation and choice of methods. Not to mention, if you’re working with clients, this also allows you to communicate to them in advance that there may be delays.
Removal of Booking Hassle
Imagine the situation. You are in the middle of an intense task that requires all your concentration. As you’re laser-focused on tackling it, an email notification pops up. You can see it’s titled ‘holiday request’, but you are far too busy right now and don’t want to lose the momentum. You brush it off and tell yourself you will check it later. Except you never do an now you have a disgruntled employee on your hands. We’ve all been there.
This scenario and its different variations are very common, as well as employers simply forgetting they granted time off. A holiday management system removes this bump in the road. First of all, it is centralised, meaning you won’t have to dig through your inbox whenever you’re ready. Secondly, some solutions allow you to make your decision straight from your email, without logging into the software. And finally, it is an overall easier and fool-proof method for all parties involved. You can even program the platform to automatically reject holiday requests if there are too many people taking leave simultaneously.
Further Betterment of the Process
In addition to the key benefits described above, holiday management systems come in different shapes and forms. This means the features they offer will differ too. Many solutions are capable of providing more than just the basics. Let’s explore some of the options.
Hands-off Shift Scheduling
Scheduling a rota shouldn’t be a difficult task. However, when you need to take into consideration everyone’s availability and ensure everyone is getting enough/not too many hours, it can become a lengthy game of balancing. And thus it can get especially frustrating when last-minute changes such as sick calls or blatant no-shows happen. Not to mention, it severely disrupts the workflows and an immediate replacement is often off the books. While the latter is more difficult to solve, there is still a solution.
Similar to how some solutions come with a holiday management system being part of them, shift scheduling is sometimes a feature of the module. As the name would suggest, it’s especially handy for companies that operate on a shift-basis as it will automatically build a rota based on employee availability. If both modules are connected to a timesheet software, any existing time rules will be taken into an equation too. Some solutions will automatically assign shifts to the next available person in the event of cancellation or allow workers to swap shifts.
Automatic Carryover and Holiday Accrual Calculations
Finally, the last but not the least benefit of a holiday management system is that it will take ownership of calculating holiday accruals and carryovers. While both are easy concepts in theory, a variety of factors can add layers of complications to them. As they pile up, a simple operation can become time-consuming and prone to errors, both of which are detrimental when we’re talking about maintaining good relationships with your staff.
Entrusting these calculations to the machines is the best solution. No matter how many factors are in the play, including differentiating rates or contracted number of hours, the software will consider that. As long as the data is keyed in correctly, there will be no errors and the results will be provided within seconds. In other words, you get to expedite the process, reduce human error and win back the time. Not all tools offer this feature, so we recommend requesting a demo or a trial for the software of your interest.
Where to find a Holiday Management Solution
If you’re tempted to give a holiday management system a shot, you’re likely ready to start a research. Which, given the saturated software market, can be a lengthy process. Well, hold your horses. It might be within your reach already.
Part of the Bigger Picture
The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to purchase a separate new tool just for the sake of managing your team’s holiday. If you already have a big digital toolbox, it can be tasking to find a new solution to add, ensuring it integrates with the existing software. Quite a few bigger tools your business may already be utilising or is planning to adopt come with a holiday management module as a part of it.
Timesheet Portal is one of them. While we specialise in time tracking, pay & bill, onboarding and other related procedures, holiday management is also a part of the system. What’s more, it is part of the default build, meaning the feature comes with the product no matter how your plan is built. In Timesheet Portal, you can create custom holidays, easily calculate carryovers and holiday accruals, create the approval process from scratch and always remain in the loop of your team’s availability. We are currently working on enhancing the module with new functionality, so stay tuned.
Summary
While holiday management is more complicated in practice than in theory, there is a way of simplifying it. Namely, entrusting it to a holiday management system. This way you create a way for your staff to easily request annual leave, as well as an effortless reviewing for the approvers. It also provides a centralised environment in which you can view your team’s overall availability across a chosen period of time. This will help you avoid being understaffed as well as provide an opportunity to plan ahead to avoid workflow disruptions.
There are also often additional features that come with a holiday management system. For example, you will no longer have to worry about calculating carryovers and holiday accruals, especially with workers who have differentiating rates or irregular hours. Most of the systems, when they are linked with digital timesheets, will handle this process for you. Additionally, some solutions will automate and speed up employee scheduling operations by both generating rotas and replacing unavailable workers when needed.
Ready to master holiday management? Give us a shout.
