holidays

Re: holidays

Gillian Mostyn — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:24:31 GMT

Many thanks for lots of constructive advice. As has been said, it is a bit of a minefield and impossible to please everyone - but I will continue to try!

Re: holidays

Christopher Tansley — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:37:56 GMT

Just as a word of caution - I think anyone who stops their staff taking Fridays/Mondays when they have been previously really needs to good good quality legal advice from an employment specialist - it is an absolute minefield and pretty much always favours the employee as a default.

As an example, a vet who is in a long distance relationship might be taking long weekends - stopping them could potentialy amount to constructive dismissal.

The lesson I have learned (fortunately as an employee rather than an employer) - is that your employment law needs to be spot on.

The joys of rotas..................

Re: holidays

Amie Glaves — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:26:38 GMT

In my last job, we worked a 1:3 Saturday rota and the following week our day off was a Friday thus giving a long weekend that was scheduled. Would your rota allow you to rota long weekends for staff occasionally?

Re: holidays

Jill Nute — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:16:26 GMT

We moved to a written holiday request form a few years ago, which for nurses/reception has to be agreed by head nurse/office manager before coming to a partner to be finally approved, vets deal direcly with a partner. The OOH vet rota is fixed about 3 months in advance by senior assistant who asks for any predictable absences to build into the rota. The form was a great help in actually recording how much holiday had been taken & gave staff the chance to sort out cover before approving holidays.

Re: holidays

Clive Ansell — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:29:01 GMT

[quote user="Gillian Mostyn"]

(says the person who has had 3 1/2 weeks off in total this year - who'd be the boss?)

[/quote]

Who'd be the boss? - well not me , that's for sure. you should give yourself more holiday, 28 days including bank holidays is the legal minimum for employees. Sounds like a nightmare trying to keep everyone happy though.

As a locum I get all the holidays I want, which allows me to pursue my mountaineering interest, it would be almost impossible as a paid assistant on the basic legal minimum holiday allowance.

Re: holidays

Glen McIntosh — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:57:59 GMT

I think it is about fairness - being fair to all employees as well as being fair to yourself as an employee and to the needs of the business, and rules - clear guidelines in place for all employees that you also follow as an employer and clear explanations as to why these guidelines are in place from a fairness perspective and business need perspective.

For example, like Chris, we also limit holidays to one member of staff for each of the three groups at any one time. For staff who put in a holiday request greater than 6 weeks in advance and nobody else is booked for that period, then that request is pretty much automatically approved (except over Christmas). This usually gives sufficient time to arrange cover for that staff member.

With the long weekend scenario complicated by a rostered day off for another member of staff in the same grouping that you have described, perhaps you could:

make a rule that Mondays and Fridays cannot be taken as holiday (outside of RDO's) unless part of a full weeks holiday.
staff wanting to take a Monday or Friday or both off for long weekend purposes could still do that, but they would need to arrange a swap themselves with the person due to have their RDO on that day.

Cheers

Glen

Re: holidays

Christopher Tansley — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:29:42 GMT

No easy answer for the Friday/Monday thing, but I worked for a long time at a practice where staff were split into 3 groups, Vets, Nurses and Reception. Only one of each group was allowed on holiday a the time. Generally if people wanted a long weekend they could have it, as long as no-one was already off, so it didn't cause to much of a drop in staffing. Always a problem when one is off and onother goes off sick though.

Over christmas we were just not allowed annual leave as it was seen as unfair to everyone else. There were some grumbles but everyone knew it and generally accepted it.

Re: holidays

Toby Birch — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:29:54 GMT

Never an easy problem.

I work for and emergency clinic but we were having similar problem with people always booking weekends off +/- friday. These are always the hardest to cover as well. The option we went for was to pro-rata the holidays to days of the week. i.e. 4 weeks holidays therefore 4 fridays/sat/sun etc. Obviously within reason as weddings etc can crop up at any time but this was what we are aiming for.

Good luck.

Toby