What is your company's annual leave system?

[Tripadvisor101]

I'm getting a bit frustrated about my organisation's annual leave system and just wanted to see if anyone had a better system.

We use a platform where annual leave requests are inputted. This then comes to their line managers email address and it's approved or not.
A good system in theory and I can log on and see who is in or out.

However, what frustrates me is that I'm project managing a complex project but I'm not line managing everyone in the project. This means the annual leave requests and discussions come to me for the people I line manage but not the others.

Today is a classic example of I didn't know someone was off until I messaged them to ask them to do a task for the project.

In theory I could go on the system daily to check who is in or out but I just wish people would communicate better to let people know they're out. It's a very small org so a Teams message would suffice.

Am I expecting too much? Maybe it's just me. When I've been in shall teams previously we added leave to each other's calendars if we were working closely together. It meant we always knew to talk about tasks in advance of annual leave.

Surely, as a PM your project team members let you know in advance when they will be on leave and who will be covering them, or even discuss with you before booking, and you make a note of this?

I think there is always some
Level of onus on the individual to proactively communicate to those they’re working with that they have X leave coming up. It’s a problem where I am with junior people. We’re now encouraged to add a red line to our email signatory to say: upcoming leave x dates

Similar situation where I work, so when I start a new project, I create a simple excel annual leave planner. Team members are then responsible for adding their leave and making sure any additional time off during the project is added. It goes in the SharePoint folder so everyone has sight of it.

Just check the system or make a shared A/L tracker? Or get everyone involved to send you their a/l dates and you can make an excel tracker yourself

Our annual leave is put in workday and is automatically approved. We are expected to manage our own time, our line managers have more important things to do.

Any project managers we work with have a system, maybe a calendar on sharepoint so all project members can input annual leave for visibility, the project manager doesn’t control any leave.

it is the PMs job to tell their project team how they want leave communicated so they can plan around available resources.

We have an online platform where you make requests and you can see the number of people who have also been granted that day off and also the number of people applying for that day. It’s a visual graph with coloured sections. There is a red line that indicates that requests which go above the line won’t be granted now, but possibly may be later, though unlikely. If your request falls below the line, you will definitely be granted that day off. A manager’s approval is never needed. Your manager has nothing to do with whether leave is granted or not. It is organised by a central team.

When I've worked on large/complex projects, the PM has a spreadsheet for everyone working on the project to input their leave. As we work internationally, there would also be each country's public holidays in there too. And key project deadlines can be in the same spreadsheet.

I have to check with manager and once he says it's ok, enter it on a system that doesn't require anyone to approve it (personally I'd rather be able to request on the system and have it approved). We then add a meeting via Teams for the wider team (I.e. everyone that reports to my manager)

Outside of the team, people only know I'm off by my out of office message. If I'm involved in any projects though I'd expect to handover anything likely to come up while I'm on leave.

IMO, anyone on the same project should share their outlook calendar with their manager (and ideally the whole team) and mark their holidays in there.

I have had a similar problem in the past - work for a company where people may have 2 or 3 very different part time roles within the same company resulting in 2 or 3 line managers but the system only allows for leave requests to be managed by one person.

Now we have a rule whereby when you book leave, you add it to your calendar and include your other 1/2 line managers so they are aware and it shows in their calendar too. Seems to work.

We have a portal but also mark it on the calendar on the office wall so anyone can check there (this habit pre-dates the online system). But mainly we just talk to each other so if anyone needs someone to cover they arrange that between them, and with everyone else it tends to just be lunchtime/office chat or might be mentioned in a meeting. There are only about 10 of us though.

At my place, we send a meeting invite for the duration of the leave, then it’s right there in everyone’s calendar.

Thanks for all these thoughts. I'll mull them over. Seems like potentially some changes we can make as an org and potentially some for myself as project manager.

We have to book it with manager via portal,but she then updates the rota, which also includes things like volunteering days, medical leave, training- we have to have enough cover, so we're also asked to check with colleagues when planning leave. I had a day off last week which I was only allowed as it was a funeral, and it did leave us short, but it turned out okay. (I'd have rather not have had a funeral to go to, so)

Some people also add planned leave into their email signatures, but this is optional and other people are crap at communication...

We send a message to anyone we think might care that we will be out.

there is no way to predict everyone who might decide that contacting me is critical on a given day. It’s also unlikely that many of the people I don’t notify would even note that I was important if I sent them a leave message in advance. It only is when something specific arises that my absence is noteworthy.

We get a sheet on the kitchen table where we fill out which weeks we want to take, then it gets approved (or not, I suppose, if too many want to be off at the same time), then we get asked to reconfirm before July (so payroll can calculate holiday pay) and we're supposed to put our holidays on the outlook calendar that everyone can see so its clear to everyone who is off when. No one has put their holidays on their yet though so I don't know how compliant people are with this (I'm new so first experience of annual leave here) but an online calendar that everyone can access strikes me as the simplest way to ensure managers know when everyone is away.