Holiday procedure

Having a clear procedure for booking annual leave can help avoid these disputes and minimise potential tensions.

The procedure should include:

• The holiday year period – when does this start and end
• Where the employee can find their holiday entitlement – is this in their employment contract, the holiday procedure or a system
• What notice is required when requesting annual leave
• How the employee should make a request – do they need to complete a form?
• Confirm that employees should not make any bookings until the request is approved
• If you wish to provide the option of allowing employee's to carry over holidays, you will need to consider providing guidance to cover:
• if carry over would be automatically added to their holiday entitlement if not used or if this needs to be requested and approved
• the maximum number of days allowed to be carried over
• whether those carry over days need to be used by a set period
• Whether the Company requires employees to take leave on specified dates i.e. Christmas shut down

Preventing holiday build up

At the half year point, it’s a good idea to check that annual leave is being used by employees. This can help prevent a scenario where all of your staff have lots of annual leave to take at the end of the year.

Check the number of annual leave days remaining for your staff and if they still have a high balance encourage them to plan and take the leave. Remind them that holidays are good for their wellbeing as they allow them to rest and recharge, send them a communication confirming how much leave they have remaining and ask them to plan in their holidays for the remainder of the year.

Do you have a holiday procedure in place which covers the above? Do you need a form to capture carry over requests for your employees? If you need support with this, please reach out on 01905 900080.