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Once you’ve gotten your business underway, and your big enough to hire some staff, you’ve got a lot to consider. You need to figure out payroll, sick leave, and of course, annual leave. Holiday is one of the biggest areas that can trip up small businesses. It’s incredibly easy to double book or forget holiday, leaving your business understaffed. To help you get to grips with your staff holiday, this post will give you some tips and ideas.
When you hire a staff member, you should give them a contract. It will cover all sorts of information. But, the only bit we care about, for now, is the annual leave section. In most places, staff are entitled by law to have a minimum amount of annual leave per year. You should detail exactly how many days they are allowed, or how much they have to work to earn holiday. You should also limit how many people can take holiday at once. Usually, this is done on a first come first served basis. Then, you can let staff discuss amongst themselves to swap holiday. You should also impose a limit on how late someone can ask for holiday. Staff members will leave it up until the day before if they can. So, it’s a good idea to cover yourself. You should also cover what happens to any unused holiday if a staff member leaves. Most of the time, you will simply payout whatever the holiday is worth.
Before you hire any staff, you should set up a registration system for your staff. Built into this system should be a staff holiday planner. This planner should be checked weekly, to ensure that you remember when staff are off. If you don’t have set shifts, and instead use a rota, you’ll need to be extra careful. In a lot of businesses, having a staff member off can make life a lot harder for the other staff at work. Having a system in place will make it easier to monitor how much time staff are having off, as well. If you give someone too many holiday days, it will end up costing your business money. If this happens regularly, it can cost a lot. It also makes it easier to make sure that you don’t overbook days off, and leave yourself short staffed.
Unfortunately, even if it leaves you understaffed, you usually have to honor any holiday you authorized in the past. This is usually a legal requirement and should be taken very seriously. It is also very bad for moral if you double book holiday. People have lives outside of work, and will usually only book leave for important events. By taking holiday away at short notice, you’ll stop them from being able to do what is important to them. Which isn’t fair.
Staff holiday can be a tricky game. Ideally, you need always to be on top of your holiday. Make sure that you have good staff members who understand the procedures well. It’s alright to stop people from taking holiday during certain parts of the year, but you should warn them well in advance.
