Are Spreadsheets the Right Tool for Leave Management?
We love Microsoft Excel. From bookkeeping to sales reports it has transformed business, but is it really a good way to manage your company’s annual leave? Ever since the rise of the MS Office Suite in the 1990s, spreadsheets have become a go-to tool for business life. So when you realise that you need to […]
Do You Spend Too Much Time Calculating Holiday Pro-Rata?
Pro-rata holiday entitlement is a topic that seems to crop up all over the internet, at least in business forums and HR websites. Posts that you will find about pro-rata holiday calculations often become very complicated very quickly. Take for example this post on a business forum from a few years ago. In that thread, […]
How do You Handle the End of Your Holiday Year?
In most companies there is one aspect of annual leave that causes headaches for HR and management, every company has one, and if you don’t handle it right it can leave you short-staffed, dealing with disgruntled staff, or even breaking the law. We’re talking about the end of your company’s holiday year. So here’s the […]
How Will You Manage Your Annual Leave this Christmas?
Throughout the western world, Christmas creates a demand for annual leave like no other. With multiple public holidays and social expectations for visiting family and enjoying holiday activities, most staff will want some time off during the festive period. Balancing competing demands for leave and the needs of the business becomes a daily struggle. As […]
What is Absence Management?
We talk about absence management a lot on this blog, unsurprisingly perhaps given what we do, but what is absence management for, and how do you go about it? In this post, we’ll explain what we mean by absence management, and some of the key ways to do it. At the risk of stating the […]
How do you deal with leave requests at a short notice?
When you’re running a business, sometimes seemingly little things can have a severe impact. One of these is last minute leave requests. To the employee it might seem like no big deal but, especially when your operation depends on staff being present, granting a request at short notice has costs both in financial terms and […]
How to Calculate Annual Leave
Do You Know How to Calculate Annual Leave? A common complaint among managers and business owners is that they spend too much time administering and managing annual leave. It can be a complicated task to work out exactly how much time off each employee is entitled to, particularly for new starters. The complexity of the […]
Employee absence – how does it impact your business?
Absence Whatever business you’re in, if you employ people, the chances are that at some point, absenteeism has caused you a headache. But are you aware of just what it might be costing you? By absenteeism, we mean unplanned absences. These are distinct from pre-planned leave, sabbaticals, or training time. Unplanned absence costs your business […]
Are You Ready for the Summer Holidays?
Are You Ready for the Summer Holidays? The weather’s getting warmer, schoolchildren are getting excited, and you’ve probably found yourself longing to lie on a beach somewhere. All this can only mean one thing; the summer holidays are nearly upon us. For managers this can be stressful, as the hike in the number of staff […]
Does your company use duvet days?
What is a ‘Duvet Day’? One annual leave trend you may have heard of spreading to the UK from trendy Silicon Valley firms is the so-called ‘duvet day’. A growing number of companies allow them, and they often make a statement about the organisation’s culture. This article from the Daily Mail takes a detailed look […]