The summer is possibly one of the most testing times for an employer once the holiday season kicks in. Managing staff holidays and cover can be tricky, especially if you’re a small business or team. If you have employees with families, there will inevitably be clashes during the school holidays with more people wanting to take holidays at the same time. So how do you handle this?

Agency workers can be a real help with increased demand during the summer, especially if you have staff absent during the school holidays. Work placements can be from as little as one day so you can have the peace of mind that your business won’t suffer while your employees take their holidays.

At Premier Placement Services we pride ourselves on providing a speedy response to clients that need someone at short notice. We can even have someone in place within an hour! Our 24hr emergency telephone service means that you can source staff at any time, day or night.

Here’s our top tips for effectively managing employee holidays:

• Make sure your employees are all aware of the rules for requesting holidays – if you’ve not got one, you could put an annual leave policy in place.
• Specify if there are busy times during the year during which employees shouldn’t request leave.
• Let your employees know if they are allowed to carry over leave entitlement from one year to the next.
• Create an annual leave schedule and share this with your employees so they can avoid holiday clashes as much as possible.
• If you have times in the year where your team want to be on holiday at the same time, consider approving leave on a ‘first-come, first-served’ basis or think about recruiting from an agency to cover workloads on a temporary basis.

We’re here to help and have temporary staff available in a range of sectors, so give us a call to discuss your needs.