What's fair? Team of working mums and annual leave in school holidays

[Lovingmylife]

I started a new role not so long ago and we are all working mums. Most with school age children, two with babies/preschool and two with older teenagers.

Our manager has told us that too many of us want Easter holidays/May half term and so it's causing a bit of a hoohaa.

Manager has said she will do first come first served unless we come up with a better solution.

First come first served is NOT the fairest, some people can’t be organised in that way, they may be waiting for partners rotas etc.

The fairest way is to have a deadline for requests for peak periods and to consider all submitted requests as a whole and then divvy up accordingly.

What do the working dads in the office do? Copy them.

We need leave requests in 8 weeks in advance - NHS .There's a general default of first come first served but manager has a list of all staff with school age children and makes clear that leave will be divied up fairly and is explicit that obviously not everyone can be off at once and that just because you have school age children that doesn't mean others can't apply for leave in school holidays .

We negotiate amongst ourselves, taking turns if there is no other agreement.
I'm a real planner and know exactly what dates I want fir the year, but one of my colleagues is a single parent who struggles to get her ex to commit to childcare arrangements, so we both compromise while also accommodating other areas of the organisation that are heavy with working parents.

Our management have made it crystal clear that any fuss or discord over holiday arrangements will lead to them reviewing how flexible that can be in what is currently a very family friendly employment

Then it was by date received and seniority.
So the lowly minions get last all on being able to take the kids away because they're not as important. Nice.
First come first served is the fairest - if you want it, you make sure you book as soon as your employer allows you to.
So person 1 requests a week Feb, a week Easter, a week May, and week 2 and 5 of the summer holidays, and person 2 and for Easter, May, weeks 1 and 4 and October and that's basically the rest of the team screwed when they could all submit it minutes apart??

I would alternate so A and B have first say at Christmas, C and D at Easter, and E and F at summer. If they haven’t booked their dates by 8weeks before the holiday, then it’s a free for all (first come serve). Then each year, rotate it it.

Don’t think families with school age children have priority either, especially at Christmas or Easter, as a grandparent may want time to,spend of with grandchildren, or a couple may want to go away together at Christmas etc.

We do first come first serve. We work a rolling shift pattern so can work out our working days years in advance if we want. Our leave booking period is always open, ie I could book a week in 2023 now if I wanted.

People without children are still entitled to book time off at peak times if they want. There can be loads of different reasons they might want time off then and they shouldn't be penalised and pushed to the bottom of the list simply because they don't have children.

Funnily enough booking weeks off in holiday times in advance never seemed to be an issue at work. The only leave problems occurs when people decide they want time off at short notice.

I book Christmas leave in January lol

We had a phase where virtually everyone in our department had school aged children and it was a nightmare. A couple of the longest standing staff members seemed to think they could have whatever they wanted and would book up large swathes of the holidays before anyone else got the chance. We are limited regarding how many can be off at once so it meant that some people couldn't get any leave in the holidays at all, and obviously they were unhappy. Those who had to wait for spouses to get leave allocated did particularly badly.
So we drafted a voluntary code that eventually everyone agreed to, stating that everyone was guaranteed 4 of their 6 weeks leave in the school holidays , with no more than 2 consecutive weeks at a time unless there were special circumstances, in which case the head of dept had discretion to grant more. Once everyone had their 4 weeks, whatever was left over could be booked on a first come first served basis, though we did keep a record of who got the extra weeks, to make sure that the same one or two people weren't hogging them all every year. There was a bit more detail, but that was the general gist of things and it worked pretty well for a good few years. Then we got a new manager who didn't like us negotiating our leave with each other so it went back to first come first served. Fortunately, quite a few people's children had left school by then and they now actively avoid school holidays which has made it a bit easier, but we all think our system worked more fairly.

When I had this problem I used to allow 2 weeks only to be booked in the first instance by each person, by length of service rather than seniority (ensuring no favouritism to myself as lots of staff had been there decades). Once everyone had had the chance to book 2 weeks the list went round again to book 1 more week then round again for another week. After that it was a free for all.

It meant everyone getting at least 2 weeks they wanted and in practice they usually got more. Before I came in the same women had booked all the school holiday weeks every year, much to the displeasure of the rest of the staff. It wasn't popular with those staff who no longer got everything they wanted but at least everyone got a decent holiday.
Hope you get at least some of the leave you want.