During the busy summer and holiday seasons, it is not uncommon for businesses to experience a higher volume of employee vacation requests. It is important for employers to stay prepared for this busy season, and that is where employee vacation planning comes into play.
Here is everything you need to know:
Employee vacation planning is an employer's process for managing time off requests. This involves:
When it comes to busy vacation seasons, like during the summer or around Fall / Winter holidays, proper employee vacation planning is key to maintaining operations and keeping your business going.
When employers implement strong employee vacation planning processes, they can:
There are some general best practices that employers can follow to maintain strong employee vacation planning processes.
Here are some beginner tips:
However, the best thing an employer can do is create an employee vacation planning checklist to follow to prepare for those busy vacation seasons.
Here is a general checklist employers can follow to stay prepared for high volumes of vacation and PTO requests:
Now we'll dive deeper into the first three steps.
Including an employee vacation policy in your employee handbook is a great tool to establish procedures and employee entitlements.
The first thing to note is that an employee vacation policy may need to consist of multiple employee leave policies, based on the leave laws of your state.
Regardless, including a specific vacation policy for PTO along with any required employee leave policies can ensure that your handbook goes beyond just the basics of who gets leave, how it may be used, and how it is earned.
Here are some key points to cover in an employee vacation policy:
Policies take time to develop, review, and test for effectiveness. Without an internal HR team in place, they can be difficult to implement on your own.
Luckily, employee handbook services do exist and are an affordable way to get handbooks reviewed and updated, as well as create new and effective policies.
Learn more about the employee handbook services that are available to employers through EBC HCM's HR Services.
While there isn't a single type of software for vacation tracking, employers can access the necessary tools and solutions through most modern HCM solutions, including the following software:
Contact us today to learn more about how these solutions can drastically impact your employee vacation planning and management.
A handover plan is a document of some kind that details pending tasks and initiatives that an employee is leaving unfinished.
While sometimes these can be used when an employee is leaving a company for good, they also come in handy when an employee is going out on an extended or even week-long vacation.
Before an employee goes out on vacation, it is a good idea to have them fill out a handover plan, so that any pending tasks that need to be completed while the employee is gone can be assigned to a different worker.
Some key information to include in a handover plan includes:
Employee vacation planning is the process employers use to manage employee time-off requests. It typically involves coordinating vacation requests, tracking paid time-off (PTO) balances, and maintaining adequate staffing while employees are away.
Employee vacation planning helps businesses maintain operations during periods when vacation requests are especially high, such as the summer and fall/winter holiday seasons. A strong planning process can help prevent staff shortages, avoid scheduling conflicts, simplify PTO tracking, and support compliance with applicable leave laws.
Effective employee vacation planning can help employers prevent staff shortages, avoid scheduling conflicts, easily track PTO balances, maintain adequate shift coverage, and ensure compliance with applicable leave laws.
Employers can prepare by establishing clear vacation and PTO policies, using centralized tools to manage requests and balances, requesting major time-off plans well in advance, communicating procedures to employees, and reviewing staffing needs as soon as the request window closes.
A general employee vacation planning checklist should include establishing a vacation/PTO request policy, adopting software to manage requests, balances, and scheduling, creating a handover plan template for employees, communicating policies and handover procedures before busy vacation seasons, and reviewing schedules and shift coverage after the request window closes.
An employee vacation policy establishes procedures and employee entitlements related to vacation and PTO. It is typically included in an employee handbook and explains how vacation time is earned, used, requested, and managed.
If your business is struggling with managing employee vacation requests, other leave and PTO requests, shift coverage, or some other time and labor management challenges, it may be time to turn to a Human Resources company for help.
Contact us today to learn more about how EBC HCM is helping businesses tackle their time and labor challenges.