With the holidays coming up, there’s a good chance your business is preparing to be without a team member or two for at least a few days during the period.
Running a smaller business which employs only one person in any particular role, it can be difficult to balance a few factors around leave.
- Upholding your legal requirements.
- Being fair and reasonable to employees.
- Making sure you can still get business done.
Know the leave legalities
- All staff are entitled to four weeks paid leave per year, plus statutory holidays and sick leave. This can be accrued throughout the year or given in a block on the employee’s work anniversary.
- Staff must be able take two weeks of leave in a row if they want to.
However:
- You can decline an employee’s request for leave if you have a good reason – like an especially busy period or because too many other staff will be away at the same time. You should make reasonable accommodations like proposing alternative dates.
Let your staff know about when they must or must not take leave in advance
If you have a shutdown period over the holidays, you need to let your employees know two weeks in advance. In practice, it’s much better to let them know as far in advance as possible, so employees can take it into account when making plans.
In the same vein, your business may have regular times when everyone is needed – before summer, end of the financial year, etc. Let your staff know that their requests for leave during this time will be turned down, so they don’t make plans for holidays at these times.
Have clear policies
It can be tempting to decide you’ll deal with leave requests and problems as they crop up, but written policies help you keep things clear between you and your employees. Policies should include things like who gets to take leave if more than one person wants it at the same time (usually first-come-first-served, but not always.) What your minimum staff requirements are, both in terms of numbers, and levels of experience. And how leave should be applied for – in writing, two weeks in advance where possible.
But be reasonable
If you’re a small business, it’s likely everyone works closely together and knows one another. Talk with your employees to solve problems around leave – who can most reasonably take an alternate date? Consider whether someone without children can take holidays during the school term, or if someone whose family lives overseas needs more time around Christmas than someone with family close by.
Make sure everyone knows each other’s job (at least a bit)
Small businesses can often struggle to hire temporary workers, so other staff members need to take up the slack if someone else is away. This is a good chance to do some cross-training, so staff can do parts of another job and everything gets covered. Particularly make sure that things like invoicing and payments will be looked after.
Also encourage good handover practices – staff going on leave should leave detailed information round tasks due, work in progress, deadlines, and key contacts. Make sure that the missing person’s email account can be accessed in a pinch, and that they know there may be other eyes on their emails.
Ensure your staff take their leave
On the other end of the spectrum, small businesses sometimes find that employees never take time off. There’s deadlines to be met and work to be done, and particularly where employees are young and childless, they may accrue months’ worth of leave over their employment.
This is a negative for you because it creates a liability – if the employee leaves you could face paying out a large lump sum. It’s also a negative because working continuously without a break leads to lower employee productivity and increased risk of burnout.
If you have employees with a lot of leave on the books, talk with them about having a break. Try to find a time for them to take leave which works for both of you. You could offer to pay out a portion of the leave in conjunction with a holiday.
If these discussions don’t pan out, you can force the employee to take some or all of their leave at a particular time. You have to give the employee 14 days’ notice, and if they do show up to the office during the time you’ve directed them to stay away, that day still counts as leave.