Ensuring PTO requests are handled properly
Like most parts of employee management, handling time off requests can be a sensitive issue.
The last thing you want as a manager is to be accused of favouritism, or make a mistake that leaves someone upset.
As such, treading carefully when it comes to your process of reviewing and approving holidays is important.
This article will look at the ways you can make sure that time off requests are handled in a fair, transparent manner so your employees can have no complaints.
Create and publicise a clear policy
It’s important to first set the ground rules by which requests will be dealt with. This ensures everyone is on the same page around their own responsibilities in the process.
Any leave policy should cover not just how to request time off and the process for doing so, but also whether there are busy periods where your business can’t afford to have too many holidays being taken, as well as if specific team members can’t be off at the same time.
Try to cover as many eventualities as you can, but rest assured that you can also give yourself the flexibility to make decisions “in the best interest of the business”.
Including a statement like this gives you some leeway if unexpected circumstances arise, though of course you shouldn’t abuse this clause or you risk losing the trust of your employees.
When your policy is set, make sure that staff are aware of it and know where they can access it. Publicise any changes that are made as well so that no one can claim ignorance as an excuse if things don’t turn out how they expect when they submit a leave request.
Know each employee’s allowances
Keeping track of how much leave an employee has is obviously a key part of understanding what your schedule might look like over the course of a year.
If, as a simple example, each employee works around 250 days a year with 25 days of holiday, then you know that over the course of the year, each employee will be working 90% of the time and off on leave for the rest.
That means taking on projects that require all, or nearly all, of your employees, is a risky proposition! Your average staffing levels should be the baseline you’re working with, rather than your full roster of staff.
If your staff aren’t all full-time, or work inconsistent shifts, they may not have a fixed holiday allowance. It’s commonplace for time off to be linked to the hours an employee works, like granting them 15 hours of holiday for every 100 hours they work.
UK regulations specify a system to be used for calculating the leave of part-time or irregular-hours workers, so be sure your policy is aligned with any relevant legislation.
Findmyshift makes it easy to see how these variable allowances stack up, as you can simply enter percentage values in the holiday allowance field of their staff profile.
Maintain consistency across your time off team
You can also use Findmyshift to appoint time off assistants to help you manage the workload of time off requests. If you do this, you’ll want to ensure that requests are treated the same no matter who handles them.
Make sure there is a clear guide to the approval process for any time off assistants and consider checking their decisions on a regular basis to make sure that they are following the system.
Consider privacy controls
One of the things that can cause arguments in a business is if the time off requests of employees overlap, but the business isn’t in a position to approve both. It’s natural for any decision made to be seen as favouring one employee over another, which can cause friction.
Findmyshift has privacy controls for leave requests which you can turn on and off, making requests private so that this tension isn’t created in the first place.
While your decision-making rationale should be transparent, each individual decision need not be if it makes your life easier!
Communicate decisions in a timely manner
Whatever you decide for each time off request, make sure you let your employees know so they can get on with planning their time off or consider a request for a different date.
Findmyshift’s instant notifications are a quick and easy way to do this. Whether you want to let them know by email, text, or push notification, you can get your decision communicated faster and get on with the rest of your busy job as a manager.