Buckle Up, The Holiday Request Pile-Up Starts Now
May always looks deceptively calm on the calendar. Then reality bites.
Two bank holidays. Another half term. Parents juggling childcare. And in the background, the looming spectre of the six-week summer break already prompting early requests. For many employers, this is when holiday requests stop being routine and start becoming a genuine operational pressure point.
If you don’t get ahead of it, you end up firefighting declining requests inconsistently, frustrating staff, and risking gaps in cover at exactly the wrong time.
So how do you manage the surge without causing consternation for you and your teams?
Accept that demand is about to increase - and plan for it
Avoid the mistake of treating every request as it arrives and recognise the patterns in holiday requests, late spring and summer will always bring additional requests, school holidays, travel plans and employees trying to make the most of long weekends.
Here’s what you can do:
Understand busy periods in your business
Know your minimum staffing levels (and stick to them)
Be clear about the roles that are critical to keeping things running
Once you know your pressure points, you can manage requests rather than making reactive decisions.
Set Expectations early (and don’t go back on them!)
Having an unclear holiday policy doesn’t help anyone. Make sure your policy is clear and explicit about how requests are approved, restrictions around peak periods and deadlines for summer holiday requests - and the tough bit make sure you stick to that policy as the one signing off the requests.
It’s hard We know, especially when it’s Kate’s brother’s dog’s wedding and she really must go, but Ben is already off for two weeks in Ibiza. Be very careful about going against the policy for one person and then not being able to do it for someone else, nothing undermines trust faster. If exceptions are made, they must be justified and documented.
Don’t underestimate parent pressure
If you have parents in your team, ignoring the impact of half-term and summer holidays is a mistake. School life and schedules do not align with working life, those are facts but as employers it’s possible to help parents manage the squeeze. This doesn’t mean automatically prioritising them over others but it does mean thinking differently.
Can roles accommodate adjusted hours or temporary flexibility?
Can teams stagger time off rather than block it entirely?
Are there alternatives to full-week leave (e.g. split days, compressed hours)?
Ditch the spreadsheets and emails
If you’re still managing leave on spreadsheets or just approving via email request, this is where things start to slip when it gets busy. Visibility matters, you should be able to see at a glance
Who is off and when
Where gaps are forming
Whether approvals are fair and balanced across the team
Without this, you can’t have an accurate view of things and you can’t make clear decisions. The good news there are plenty of products and platforms out there to support with this, it doesn’t have to cost the earth either.
Encourage early booking
Last-minute holiday requests are a pain in the backside, but you can’t complain about them if you enable them. Encourage employees to book early by reminding about peak times, setting informal cut-off dates for high-demand weeks and making it clear that late requests are unlikely to be approved especially during busy periods.
Prepare for pushback
We can’t all go away for two weeks in August it’s just not happening but there will always be someone who asks anyway, the awkward request, the try it and see. This is where managers need to be equipped to explain decisions clearly and calmly, link back to why the business has to say no and offer alternatives - but only if they’re possible.
You can’t approve every request (and that’s ok!)
And the sooner you get comfortable with that, the better, you’re trying to manage competing needs without damaging morale or operations which is not simple! It requires structure, consistency and a bit of realism too.