Category: People Management, Top tips
The holiday season can be one of the most challenging times of year for small businesses. With employees keen to take annual leave – particularly those with school age children – many business owners find themselves under pressure to approve time off while keeping operations running smoothly.
Without the right planning and policies in place, overlapping holiday requests, unclear procedures, or last-minute absences can cause disruption, stress and strained team dynamics.
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Here’s how to manage holiday requests fairly and legally, support your team’s need for time off and protect business continuity – plus how Access2 Human Resources can support you with clear policies, procedures and hands-on advice.
Plan Ahead and Communicate Clearly
The best way to avoid problems is to start early. If you haven’t already, now is the time to review your holiday calendar, remind staff of your procedures and assess your team’s capacity over the summer months.
Encourage employees to submit leave dates as far in advance as possible. This gives you time to identify clashes and make cover arrangements. Are there any peak business periods during the year? Make sure you have enough cover before approving multiple overlapping requests and communicate clearly how many team members can be off at the same time and how leave is prioritised if there’s a conflict.
Good communication helps to manage expectations and avoid the perception of unfair treatment. If you apply your holiday policy consistently and keep an open line of communication, staff are more likely to be understanding when requests can’t be approved.
Review and Update Your Holiday Policy
A clear and up-to-date holiday policy is essential. It ensures staff understand how much leave they are entitled to, how to book time off, and how requests are approved or declined. At Access2 Human Resources, our expert team can review, advise and update both your holiday policy and any other HR documents when needed. For more information, get in touch here.
Your policy should cover:
- How to request leave, for example in writing, using a form, or an HR system, such as BreatheHR.
- Notice periods for requesting holidays
- Whether there are any restrictions (e.g. only one person off per team at any time)
- How decisions are made when there are multiple requests
- How carry-over and unused leave is handled
- Rules around peak periods, bank holidays, or business closures
An unclear or inconsistently applied policy can lead to confusion, frustration and even grievances. If your current policy hasn’t been reviewed in the past 12 months, or doesn’t account for flexible working or school holidays, it’s a good idea to update it now.
Access2 HR can review or write your holiday policy, tailored to your business and team needs.
Be Flexible – Especially with Working Parents
Summer brings extra pressure for parents juggling work and school holidays. Offering flexibility during this period not only helps staff manage their responsibilities, it can also improve employee retention and morale.
Consider how you might adjust working hours temporarily, or allow remote or hybrid working, if the role allows. Approving part day holidays, so staff can split childcare could also help and allowing employees to use unpaid leave if their normal annual leave has been used.
You are not legally obliged to approve all requests but showing reasonable flexibility where possible demonstrates that you value and support your team. Many small businesses find that offering a degree of give-and-take leads to a more loyal and committed workforce in return.
Consider using temporary staff to cover short, busy periods. Our colleagues at Personnel Placements can provide qualified, fully interviewed candidates to help ease the workload if needed.
Understand Your Legal Obligations
All employees are entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks’ paid annual leave per year (pro-rated for part-time staff). While you can set rules around how and when leave is taken, it must be applied fairly and consistently across your team.
You are within your rights to refuse or cancel leave requests if they clash with business needs, but you must let the worker know beforehand by at least the same amount of time as the amount they requested. Employers can require employees to take leave at specific times (e.g. over a business shutdown), but you must give double the amount of notice as the leave to be taken. While staff cannot demand holiday at short notice, employers should not unreasonably delay or prevent employees from taking leave they are entitled to.
If you’re unsure whether your approach is legally compliant, we can advise. Our HR audits include a full review of your policies, leave processes and holiday records. Get in touch for more details and prices.
Keep Records and Stay Organised
Managing leave effectively means keeping accurate records of:
- Annual leave entitlements and remaining balances
- Dates of all approved (and declined) leave
- Cover arrangements in place
- Any adjustments made for working parents or special circumstances
Using a centralised holiday planner or HR software like BreatheHR that Access2 Human Resources partners with, can help you avoid overlapping absences and spot patterns early, such as certain teams being under-resourced at key times. This also allows you to respond more fairly when multiple employees want time off at once.
If you’re still using spreadsheets or paper records, it may be time to upgrade to a simple HR system that streamlines holiday approvals, balances and reporting so get in touch to find out more about how BreatheHR works and its benefits.
Holiday management doesn’t have to be stressful. At Access2 Human Resources, we support small businesses like yours with:
✔️ Legally compliant holiday policies
✔️ Custom employee handbooks
✔️ Practical advice on handling overlapping requests
✔️ Guidance on parental leave and flexible working
✔️ Tools and templates to manage holiday approvals
✔️ Regular updates on employment law
✔️ Support handling grievances or disputes
We make sure your policies are fair, clear and easy to apply, protecting your business while supporting your team.
Book your FREE meeting here to talk about how we can review your holiday procedures and HR documentation.
Or learn more about our HR Packages, tailored for small businesses by exploring our HR support plans.