AIBU - team holiday requests

[aibuboss]

This is playing on my mind and I know I will get honest replies here. NC because it's potentially outing...

I am A in this situation.

A is a senior manager with a small team- B is a manager too (£50k salary to demonstrate seniority) and directly line manages Employee C.

September is normally a busy time for us so holidays not really feasible unless an exceptional circumstance. The team is only 5 people, all quite different jobs, so only ever one on leave at a time unless it's August (quiet month).

I have recently approved a week off for B in September as they told me they needed to travel abroad to sort out some urgent paperwork for an elderly relative. Yesterday C declined a meeting request for the same week telling me that she was on holiday.

C hasn't booked through online holiday booking but did sent B an email that she's approved - it was before her request (via booking system). B didn't tell me this. I was fuming and told them yesterday they have told them they have until lunchtime today to sort it out between them and agree who is taking it else it's unpaid for both. Both have already booked overseas travel.

On reflection I actually think B should be the one to cancel or be unpaid- she should have known the holiday was overlapping from the email she'd approved. C has booked a holiday in good faith. This isn't the first performance issue I have with B and am now thinking about issuing a warning based on ineffective management- she shouldn't have approved C's leave anyway because of workloads (no exceptional circumstances- it's a 2 week all inclusive cheap deal!).

AIBU??

I have no restrictions on web use, eating at desks, cigarette breaks... you're projecting your own experiences onto a completely different situation!

It's paperwork you yourself say is urgent for an elderly relative. Maybe they don't need a whole week but 'paperwork leave' would be going to the bank to sort out your mortgage, not urgently making sure you're able to make decisions for your elderly relative when they no longer have the capacity to decide for themselves. Is their relative unwell?

The fact you also say in your previous post "no one has died" like that's the only stressful situation that deserves any compassion is pretty telling about how much care you show towards your direct reports.

If you were my boss, I'd be gone ASAP - good luck maintaining staffing while people take paid leave!

strictly speaking C's holiday had not been approved as it had not followed company process - either for the request or approval.

Bad managers take many forms- I had one ignore an official request for 6 weeks. No real reason, just not important enough to them to deal with. Another time a request was ignored, the date requested arrived and when I went to ask my line manager & his manager why it transpired they had both decided to take the day off instead. no communication to the team. That is bad management.

You seem to think that employees don't have a parallel responsibility to follow the rules. As for the comment that managers are responsible for the employees' competence, have you ever tried to train someone who could not or would not pick things up because learning and following something like holiday procedure is not conducive to their personal plans? A manager cannot control how someone wants to behave if they don't behave in good faith.

I don't think no pay leave or punishment is a good tactic - well, not if the manager is not also actively following up with managing the person out. I won't want to have that toxic atmosphere in the office.

You have used AIBU because you wanted honest replies and then really dont like the honest replies you get!

The best managers acknowledge that their team are human beings and have lives outside work. That doesn't mean letting them take the piss, but it does mean allowing a degree of flexibility sometimes. It generates loyalty and means that when you need to ask for it back from them, they're more likely to give it. You sound very rigid and quite aggressive.

But C booked her holiday first and it was approved, and as you've said B's leave is due to a parent being unwell and is exceptional circumstances (and frankly having recently lost my DF and during Covid times when I couldn't see as much of him as I'd like, but we didn't realise how little time he had left - with hindsight if my parent was unwell and work was trying to tell me I couldn't take leave to see them I would say screw work, as you just can't get that precious time back), so even if you had known about C's leave surely you wouldn't have not approved B's leave in those circumstances? I'm sorry but having worked places / currently on a secondment where they make such a drama out of someone being off I just think life's too short, people really will have to just muddle through.

I disagree. I approved B's leave because of her circumstances.

The issue is B having approved C's leave. I'm all for people having holiday but not when it impacts so massively on others who are obeying the rules about no holidays in September!

If you know September is a busy month to the point of not being able to deal with absences -> what happens if someone gets ill - then maybe you need to think about bringing contractors in during busy periods.

I don't know any employers who have an unlimited pot of money for their staff to take a paid week off on top of holiday to sort out paperwork for an elderly parent. No one died.

Jeez, the more I read of your posts the more I think how glad I don't work in this organisation / have you as a boss. Clearly there's a resourcing issue and you sound like a micromanager and devoid of compassion. All decent employers I know do pay compassionate leave. You say no one has died but surely you can get your head around the fact that having an elderly parent who is unwell, and in a different country, can pose challenges for offspring to deal with or at the very least can be quite time consuming fitting in on top of your FT job and regular life (I speak from experience helping sort out probate etc for my late DF - it is time consuming), and is a worrying and potentially stressful time.

Have you thought that maybe C simply hadn’t got round to putting it into the system?

She checked with B if it’s ok to go away in September, and B allowed it. That’s the same as junior colleagues checking with me a certain week is ok before they book it. It’s been approved for all intents and purposes, but it just has been entered into the system yet.

From one manager to another, you really are terrible at your job. If you want the respect of your colleagues, you don’t treat them like children, punishing them for a big misunderstanding.

So B approved holiday in time that she shouldn't have and told no one. Then took booked her own time off at the same time. Yea I see why you are angry.

If they were both good at their jobs, happy and otherwise competent, i’d ask B if they could change their dates, if not I would ask them to be contactable or maybe log on a few hours a day if they could and then not ask them to claim holiday. If not I would get the cover and the company should wear the cost if it’s really that important. I’d remind them both of leave procedures but in no world would I formally investigate (why, you know what happened?), or warn. If they both leave over this you’ll be much worse off. If there are other performance issues then I’d raise those properly rather than focussing on this.

Bad managers take many forms- I had one ignore an official request for 6 weeks. No real reason, just not important enough to them to deal with.

We had this at a place i worked (he approved his own leave early enough to take advantage of inexpensive bookings). So i approached management and said there are going to be huge issues and this has to stop. The result was a team planner for each team, and holiday had to be entered on there and signed off by the manager within 7 working days of the request. If that time schedule wasn't kept, the vacation was automatically approved.

Have you thought that maybe C simply hadn’t got round to putting it into the system?

and hopefully C has learned from that mistake: yes, check first, then book in the system. It really is that simple.

So can I.

The OP can't be that much of a hard ass because both B and C are spectacularly dismissive of company rules regarding leave and of her authority.

I think both their actions after she has flagged the issue is very poor.

Neither of them respect her position nor authority in these matters.

If you cannot manage a week without two staff (even in a small team) you aren’t leading a team well.

You will need to prioritise so that external expectations are managed and if some internal stuff doesn’t get fully done then you figure out what is critical and focus on that.

The points you lost above aren’t really direct issues - they are general ones that you couldn’t specifically attribute to a reduced headcount for 5 days.

If two employees were ill you’d manage. So manage this time.

Presumably C covered for her colleagues over the summer - so now it evens out.

If B is travelling to do admin she can oversee matters whilst travelling to an extent. If not then you’ll have to do it.

As for B and C a general reminder that the holiday booking system should be used on a timely basis is sufficient.

Nice 😂

No, OP cannot force them to take unpaid leave. The leave has been approved, albeit C didn’t use proper process and B was not upfront about approving C’s leave.

While it is legal to cancel leave if there’s a genuine business need, you can’t argue it’s a business need if you’re prepared for them to be off but not pay them.

@AssumingDirectControl but the OP has explained that it would need to be unpaid as they'd need to get agency staff in to cover which would cost money.

If they are medics or teachers then yes maybe agency workers make sense. But sounds like they are office workers of some description and OP has also said that their roles are quite different, nobody gets agency office workers in for a week to cover absences, you would be creating extra work by needing to factor in showing them what to do. This was only mentioned by the OP after many pages of being roundly vilified for the unpaid leave comment, did you notice that?

@Aprilx they are not office workers.

I have updated as regularly as I can for someone with a full time job

I think it's funny all the references to the OP needing to manage her team or the workload better. Or just get on with it because if there was a real emergency they'd have to. Well maybe yes, by pushing out deadlines, disappointing customers, renegotiating deals etc. Or by the other workers working huge overtime. All only acceptable in a true unforeseen emergency situation. People who work Iin those jobs will know that they can't take unessential leave at key times of the year. And a manager will manage to those agreements and expectations, remember it was a policy to limit leave at this time. You can't work with a surplus of staff all year in case two of your team decide to not follow policy at a key time of the year. And in many jobs you can't just replace people with temps easily. So it's in that context that B especially has caused a problem for the whole team and their manager and as a manager themselves should have behaved better. I can't see how A is at fault at all and is getting awful slack based on lots of flawed assumptions.

The issue is B having approved C's leave. I'm all for people having holiday but not when it impacts so massively on others who are obeying the rules about no holidays in September

Well the system shouldn't allow any leave to be approved in September without your confirmation. You'll know to do that next year.

As I said above, B's leave isn't for holiday so it needs to be considered differently. Sickness, bereavements, needing to deal with the welfare of a dependent relative, can't avoid September.

it's in that context that B especially has caused a problem for the whole team

To an extent, but why did C ask for holiday in September when they know it's not allowed? I agree B should have said no or escalated, but their own leave isn't for a jolly.

Because people always think what harm in asking, even if they don't expect a yes. If B wanted to accommodate for whatever reason rather than refuse then a better approach would have been to come up with a plan to manage C's leave, share that with A, get the team's deadlines aligned. You usually ask for holiday leave well in advance so maybe they could have exceptionally made it work. Maybe there's stuff A agreed to because there was no leave in the system. And then when B has to take unexpected leave they come to A again with a plan of how to minimise disruption and A is aware of the whole picture and can make their compassionate leave work. That is basic management 101 for B and none of it happened.