How to Manage Holiday Leave This Festive Season

Many people look forward to booking their leave and checking out over the holiday season. However, the new year break can also bring about big changes to the operational rhythm of your business. It might be the most important time of the year for you to make sales, or it could be the perfect time for you to take some downtime and plan for the year ahead.

Whether your business picks up or slows down over the festive period, it’s important to be prepared for the changes in demand and staff availability to come. In this holiday leave planning guide, you’ll get some new ideas on how to communicate holiday schedules to staff, manage leave requests, and maintain smooth operations. 

Understand employee rights and obligations 

Businesses can be impacted by the holiday season in different ways. Retail and hospitality businesses tend to experience huge surges in demand as people purchase gifts and catch up with friends and family. Other businesses can experience a slowdown, as workers and key decision makers take additional time off over the end of year holidays.  

The fluctuations in demand and staff availability can be difficult to balance and you may ask your employees to take leave if your industry slows down. If you do direct your employees to take annual leave under an award or agreement, remember that you need to follow Fair Work’s shutdown rules. 

For example, if your business is going to shut down during Christmas and New Year, you need to provide adequate notice to your employees and give staff who don’t have enough paid annual leave other options, such as using accrued time off, taking annual leave in advance, or taking leave without pay. You might also want to refresh yourself on the differences between stand down, unpaid leave, and shutdowns, as well as the employee leave entitlements in each situation. 

Plan ahead for the public holidays 

During the holiday season, there are plenty of public holidays and penalty rates to prepare for. You can check what public holidays are coming up for your state or territory at Fair Work. You should also make sure that you know what national and state public holiday rules apply and be ready to pay your employees correctly based on their entitlements. If you’re using foundU, the right public holiday rules and rates are built into the platform with your awards and agreements. They are then automatically referenced by your payroll software so you are confident that you are paying all of your team members right. 

You will also get reminders for public holidays on your rosters, can use an award test to view how an employee will be paid, and get a clear view of upcoming wage expenses. In addition, you can pay staff early rather than making them wait after public holidays. This is done by generating an early payslip for salaried staff or pre-approving shifts for non-salaried staff. 

Ask your employees to submit their leave requests early 

You need to plan ahead to ensure you can fill your roster and have optimal coverage over the holiday season. By asking your staff to submit their leave early, you will have enough time to consider all requests and make sure you have enough team members on deck. If you use foundU’s workforce management software, you can easily communicate with staff in bulk using email, SMS, or your online roster.

For example, you can share the company's holiday hours and encourage staff to submit their leave requests as soon as possible. You can also use a central portal for managing all leave applications. Leave requests all stream into one menu and you can approve, decline, or edit requests in a matter of clicks. Employees get live notifications via their app and the data automatically flows through to payroll for processing during the relevant pay period. If required, you can allow staff to go into negative leave over that period and automatically update their pay. 

If the pace picks up at this time of the year, make sure that you ask casual staff to update their availability so you can avoid last-minute declined or cancelled shifts. This can all be done via foundU’s employee app. If there is a peak period that you want to make sure is covered, block it out to prevent leave-requests in that time. 

Since your employees could be busy over the holiday period, it’s a good idea to switch on push notifications so you can easily keep them in the loop with roster changes. You can also add notes to shifts so team members have all the information they need to complete their work when others are on leave. 

Share the holiday calendar with your team 

Since your usual schedule will get a shake up over the holiday season, it’s a good idea to give your managers and staff visibility of when people are taking leave. If you create a shared leave calendar for your team, everyone can plan their work schedules appropriately.  

Using a workforce management platform like foundU, your managers can easily get a snapshot of who is on leave via a time-off calendar. This will allow them to easily fill last-minute absences. You can also export leave from foundU into your work calendar, such as Apple Mail, Gmail, or Outlook. This will help them to cover any skills gaps that may occur over the period. 

Developing your holiday leave strategy 

Your holiday leave strategy needs to balance fluctuating capacity and demand. You need to understand your employee rights and entitlements to a hard-earned break while ensuring that your roster is covered. 

The good news is, you don’t have to manage holiday leave requests with paper or spreadsheets. Book a demo of foundU’s workforce management software to find out how you can simplify holiday leave management and keep your business humming.