Every company faces an influx of holiday requests at least once a year. In this article, we will share tips on not getting overwhelmed by it. Additionally, how to make sure you don’t end up short-staffed.
We’ve all been in a situation where it feels like an entire company decided to take a collective annual leave. Whether the holiday requests are all coming in simultaneously or come at different times but requesting the same period off, this all quickly stacks up, requiring you to do some juggling. Balancing everything out takes time, and often that’s not a luxury most companies have. Not giving it enough attention, on the other hand, results in being understaffed and suffering efficiency losses. And this is the more common scenario.
But here’s some food for thought. What if there was a way to manage those holiday request heavy periods without sacrificing your team’s productivity or the quality of the services you provide? Fortunately for you, there is a way and simpler than you’d have expected. Caught your interest? Then carry on reading.
How Do You Solve Scheduling Problems?
Scheduling problems arise from a lack of visibility on the whole company’s availability. And are very common to occur when there are multiple approvers. When requests come rolling in from different sources, such as via email or instant messenger, it can get tricky to keep an eye on them, opening the door for scheduling conflicts to happen.
Preventing is easier and more viable than solving them. The latter means at least one of the parties involved will be at a loss, no matter the conditions of a compromise. Prevention, on the other hand, doesn’t allow the situation to occur in the first place.
Avoid Holiday Scheduling Conflicts
So, since the solution is a less favourable option, how do you implement prevention? We’ve already answered this question in the paragraph above - centralisation and visibility. But let’s dive deeper into them both to ensure we are crystal clear on what these two entail. And how to make sure they’re prevalent in your business.
Stop Managing Holidays Through Emails
We know you are guilty. In fact, many companies are. Either they’re past offenders or still relying on this method. If you don’t want to get overwhelmed by incoming holiday requests, double book yourself and end up understaffed, you seriously need to stop treating your inbox as a place where holiday management happens. It may seem convenient at first glance, but we assure you it’s the opposite. Simply put, your email is not designed for these purposes and trying to force it to do what it’s not meant to will bring more harm than good. Even if you combine it with other tools like Excel.
First of all, email threads tend to get lost. You can accidentally delete them, postpone them and forget about them, or fully blank them. The reasons why you wouldn’t as much as acknowledge a holiday request are many and of different varieties. Secondly, this is the quickest way to a managerial disaster unless you’re marking requested/approved holiday dates elsewhere. People may be requesting the same time frame off but at different times. Without a centralised view of your company’s availability, you will likely end up short-staffed by granting it. And finally, tracking holiday accruals and carryovers using email makes the task double as tedious.
Visibility for Everyone
It might sound unnecessary to some, but ensuring your workers are aware of each other’s availability can both save you time and improve general teamwork. You won’t need to be having back and forths confirming if the dates they’re requesting off are available - it is something they would be confirming themselves. And, instead of having you as a middleman, would need to coordinate holiday conflicts between themselves.
Having a centralised and accessible visibility across the company is also crucial in supporting your workers when it comes to adjusting their workflows. Sometimes, especially in bigger organisations, not everyone on the team is aware of someone going on annual leave, which may mean their overall workload increases. Given the affected workers most likely have other responsibilities too, being caught by surprise can seriously disrupt their overall progress and efficiency. Needless to say, this is not good for your business. And what’s more, it can make the affected workers resentful of either you or their colleague.
Prepare for the Future
Another way to prevent holiday conflicts long-term is to play the long game of creating an environment that takes care of it for you. The modern technology gives us a variety of tools to achieve that.
Shift Scheduling and Task Allocation
If you want to be ready for the holiday season before it begins, the best way is to ensure you have something in place to aid you. A shift scheduling software would be an absolute game-changer, for starters. It would free you from the need to work out who’s available when, and how not to pack too many or too few hours on certain employees. It is especially handy when you’re facing a temporary staff shortage as it takes away the need for you to tweak and adjust the rota manually.
You may also want to look into time and project management solutions, such as Asana or Jira. Many companies already utilise them to stay on track of their progress, but if you don’t, we highly recommend to. And if you already do, whenever a holiday season approaches, adjust them accordingly. With your team’s availability altered, the priority of tasks will shift too. Use project management tools to allocate them accordingly to avoid time clashes, delays and overworking your employees.
Automation to Ease the Workload
Finally, you would be surprised how many little tasks around your business can be automated. The mistake companies often make is assuming that automation implies entrusting the entire process to digital solutions. While it can work in some cases, more often than not it implies digitising only a few steps within the process. Sometimes even less - only the handover from one executor to the other.
There is no such thing as the ‘right’ time to start automating. The sooner you begin, the more efficient it will be as you will be adding layers of optimisation as you go. Implementing automation before you get swarmed with holiday requests means you will have fewer worries when it comes to estimating how much workforce you’ll be needing, therefore making it easier to approve or reject annual leave. And even at times when your team is full, automation will be aiding their efficiency.
Get the Right Tools
This all sounds great, but where do you find the tools that cover your needs? And what if your budget is limited and adopting multiple solutions is not an option? Fret not, because there is a way around it.
Holiday Management Platform
If what we’ve spoken about up to this point makes sense and you’re interested in trying it in practice, we have great news. All you need is one tool. Alas, depending on the specifics like features, interface preferences and other parameters, you’ll need different systems from different vendors. And the tool is a holiday management platform. The name alone suggests it’s a solution specifically designed to help you with managing your team’s time off work.
The basic setup of a holiday management system will always offer a centralised calendar view and a module for employees to request time off. More sophisticated solutions may calculate holiday accruals and holiday accrual pay, offer shift scheduling, enable the creation of custom holidays and many more. Some solutions will integrate with other tools you may be using, such as digital timesheets. Others will come as a module within other tools. A prime example of that is Timesheet Portal. A holiday management module is included in our core platform, so regardless of what add-on modules you choose, it will always be available to you.
Summary
While at least a once-a-year occurrence of a holiday request rush is inevitable, it doesn’t have to be an inconvenience to your business. Taking your holiday management out of the emails and switching to a centralised system is the first step in making your life easier. By making the platform accessible to all your employees, you will also keep them in the loop of each other’s availability, potentially preventing scheduling conflicts. It also gives them an opportunity to discuss potential annual leave plans within themselves, without your intervention.
Moving forward you should also consider digitising your process further. A shift scheduler that takes into consideration your team’s availability and has adjustable time rules, as well as a project management platform, are both great tools to prevent the holiday season from disrupting your workflows. Or, you can just opt for a general holiday management platform as some of them will combine multiple tools you need. As the name suggests, these systems are literally designed to help you navigate your team’s time off better.
Ready to manage them incoming holiday requests with a mere click? Start today.