Budget airline Ryanair has come under fire after it admitted it has ‘messed up’ their pilots holidays and would have to cancel 50 flights every day until the end of October to cover flight rotas. Due to these cancellations, Ryanair now face a massive €20m compensation bill.
Ryanair may be on the extreme scale in terms of a holiday management mess up, and many businesses may never face such a combination of events that have led to this outcome. However, the lessons are clear. Getting staff holidays wrong can negatively affect a business both financially and from a staff morale perspective. So how can businesses manage them effectively?
Monitor and record holidays accurately
For most small companies a paper-based file or a holiday spreadsheet on Excel seems to fit the bill. However, these old-fashioned tools can be problematic. Paper can go missing or be shredded. A formula can seem correct at first but quickly provide incorrect information and there’s always the annoyance of ‘read-only’ when someone else is in the document when you want to make a change.”
For any modern business to run smoothly and accurately the best solution is a software one. A people management software can be cost-effective and holidays can be recorded automatically with employers having one clear view of how much holiday entitlement employees have at any one time.
Software can also automatically flag potential holiday clashes, and annual leave balances can be updated in real time.
Encourage staff to book leave in good time
When you keep accurate records you can easily keep on top of any employee annual leave entitlements and should be aware if any employee has a sizeable chunk still to take before the end of the holiday year. If this is the case then you need to alert staff to this fact and encourage them to book leave in good time.
By doing this you avoid the potential last-minute rush of employees requesting leave, you avoid the potentially awkward conversation of having to reject holiday requests and you can plan ahead more effectively.
Plan ahead
“What do I do if a number of my staff have to take time off?”
Whether it’s annual leave or unplanned sickness absence it’s important that businesses consider the worst case scenarios when thinking about staff leave. By looking at these scenarios you can start to put plans in place to negate any impact and you can be confident that if the worst does happen you’ll know exactly what to do, rather than panic and make the wrong decisions.
Get your policy in place
Your annual leave policy should outline the procedures in terms of requesting leave and state the notice times you expect. It should also outline your procedures in terms of carrying forward any holiday, the maximum amount that can be carried across and the deadlines by which these carried forward days must be used.
Allowing employees to carry forward holidays could be extremely helpful when it comes to the potential problem of staff having to take unused time off at the end of the holiday year.
If staff have more holidays than can be carried over, your policy can also outline any special circumstance exceptions in which employees may receive payment in lieu of unused annual leave.
If you have any questions regarding annual leave entitlements or any of the issues covered in this article, please don’t hesitate to contact our 24 Hour Advice Service on 01 855 50 50
