How to manage Annual Leave? Managing annual leave is a pain point for many SMEs. Who is responsible for calculating and tracking it? Who approves it? Who decides how many employees can be on holiday at once? Who checks if employees have overtaken or undertaken on their entitlement and what happens with unplanned absences and unpaid leave? Scratch the surface and leave can be a lot more complicated that it might first appear.

How many days of Annual Leave are staff entitled to?

Most workers are entitled to a statutory minimum of 28 days’ paid annual leave per year. Their contract of employment will provide full details and include information in relation to bank holidays and whether or not they are included in the statutory entitlement. If you employ part-time workers, workers on irregular hours or casual workers, there are different calculations to apply. The government website provides a useful calculator if you are unsure.

How should I Manage Annual Leave?

First and foremost, as a business you need to consider what is best for you and your team. It is worth having a basic process in place for how employees request annual leave, how it is approved and where it is recorded. You could also include some specific information about how many of your team can be on leave at the same time. You could assign one dedicated person to receive and manage all requests. They could also go to team leaders or managers depending on the size and structure of your business.

Logging and recording Annual leave can be done in a number of ways. Some businesses use a hard copy diary stored on someone’s desk. Some have a huge wall planner and others will use spreadsheets. While there are likely to be valid reasons for each of these methods, they are all flawed in some way, shape or form and can actually create more headaches than they solve.

Can HRX Software manage the process  for me and my Business?

Without doubt HRX can make your annual leaves process quicker, slicker and less painful. HRX will automate your whole annual leave process so that it runs smoothly and you have full oversight. Employees can log in and request holiday from their desktop, laptop or mobile device. They can check and see if anyone else in the team already has those dates booked off. This can help to avoid conflicting requests and once submitted, their manager can approve or decline the request, all in a couple of clicks. HRX also shows an employee their annual leave entitlement balance so they know how many days they have available to take.

For managers, there is also the handy dashboard that shows who is on leave and if you have any pending requests. With our reporting feature you can also track annual leave usage. This helps you to look after the wellbeing of staff by making sure that they are taking leave and don’t have a large amount left coming towards the end of the year which might then in turn create issues around workforce planning.

If you want the annual leave headache to be a thing of the past then get in touch with us and be sure to sign up to our free 30 day trial!