The start of the new year can mean reviewing your company’s holiday entitlement rules and processes, and working out your own annual leave amounts.
This article will guide you through some of the questions you may have regarding annual leave, as well as advising you how HR tech can help you and your employees to keep on top of entitlement records.
How much holiday entitlement do I have?
An employee’s contract should outline clearly what the holiday entitlement period is for your company – both the number of days and the dates of the holiday year period should be made apparent. In a lot of cases, companies run their holiday year period from 1st January – 31st December and some from April-March.
If you’re using Youmanage HR, you can find out your holiday entitlement, as well as your TOIL and Overtime balances, by logging into your Self-Service portal and going to Absence -> Summary:
Are bank holidays included in my annual leave?
There is no automatic right to paid leave on bank holidays – it is an employer’s choice whether or not to include these as part of statutory annual leave. Youmanage HR allows you to pro-rate bank holidays for employees who start (or leave) part-way through the year. This saves you a great deal of time manually calculating entitlements for employees.
Can an employer refuse a request for a holiday?
Yes, as long as they provide a two-week notice for a two-week holiday request (and so on). An employee’s contract should also state how much holiday can be taken at any given time.
Using Youmanage HR you can request your holidays digitally, and managers can choose to accept or reject these. You can also request flexible working in-app, which will send a request straight to a manager for approval or rejection. If your business allows for self-approval of holidays, you can simply record your holiday days in Youmanage, with no need for a manager to approve or reject.
How can I avoid disputes about holiday leave with my employees?
Being transparent in the contract from the very start of their employment is the only way to truly avoid (and solve quickly) any potential disputes about annual leave. If the company policy is clear from the outset there will be less confusion and bitterness about holiday requests. This is only the first step, though – you need to make sure this document is easily accessible to your employees at all times. A cloud HR system is a great way to make sure all employees can access the documents they need, at any time.
How does HR software help me manage annual leave?
You should ensure your annual leave data is in a secure online HR platform, which should give you a clear overview of all staff absences, TOIL, overtime and so on. This will ensure you are always up to speed on where your employees are at any one time – whether it be on annual leave, off sick, or working from home. Youmanage HR has a visual and intuitive absence planner that allows users to get a better picture of absences in their business.
How does HR software help me comply with entitlement legislation?
HR software ensures that your employees are receiving the correct amount of holiday entitlement while providing you with the means of calculating things like pro-rata, TOIL and Overtime. Not only does it save you time in manually sorting this out for individual employees, it also reduces your threat landscape by reducing the risk of human error and data discrepancies. A graphical absence planner like in Youmanage will give you a comprehensive overview of all absences at once, while allowing you to report on this data and base future decisions around your findings.
Why Youmanage HR? Our HR software goes above and beyond any other provider – when it comes to managing absences, calculating TOIL or pro-rata, and empowering your employees with Self-Service, we blow all other HR systems out the water. Find out more about our absence module or take out a 30-day free trial today.
