Annual leave first come first served - NHS

[MakeMineALarge1]

How can first come first served be fair when the calender is open and you are off for 2 weeks and end up missing out on one of the half terms and had planned to go away

@blubberyboo

It would never be fair for annual leave to be picked according to length or service or how senior you are.

Everyone is entitled, and these factors don't make anyone more entitled.

That's like saying 'everyone with an S in their name gets to pick first'.

It just doesn't make sense. Whoever put that in place must have worked there a long time because they obviously benefited from it. Thankfully this method doesn't seem popular with many workplaces judging by replies to this thread.

I disagree, there are few perks of jobs anymore least of all working long service.

it very slightly rewards loyalty although in practice the newer members of staff arent usually disadvantaged as several people are allowed off at the same time. It ensures a calm orderly manner of selection. Everyone gets a good range of holidays to choose from and there aren’t any cries of “this isn’t fair because he or she got in first”

I see people at the bottom of the list still getting Christmas / Easter etc and it means everyone is forced to choose their strongest preference the first time round therefore not hogging all the good spots for themselves.

And loyalty isn’t the same as having an S in your name

Someone has to be last.

Tbf in your shoes this would have been one of those rare exceptions to my 'no work emails on holiday' rule and emailed from holiday. If you're on NHSMail you can do it on your phone or tablet. Don't look at your inbox, just send the email and Bob's your aunts live in lover.

Someone is always going to be upset my annual leave just this time it's you. Longer serving staff also get more days in the NHS than new starters. I know some industries do bidding by seniority and other do a ballot. We open our calendar on NYD so the poor buggers working NYE get first preference for the coming year, but we take Christmas out of it. Parents aren't the only ones that want peak time off for example October and feb are peak Caribbean season

Never worked anywhere that doesn't approve/decline holidays on a first come first serve basis.

I remember being ambushed by more than two or three parents every time I had a Christmas or summer holiday booked to get me to change. Erm, no.

We do first come, first booked with the exception of school holidays. With those, everyone says what they want, then the manager allocates it, taking into consideration who was off last time. Seems to work out ok. A couple of us don’t have school age children so don’t mind working.

I'm lucky in that in my team it really doesn't matter how many are off at any time and we all manage our own workloads, so it only needs one of us to be working to deal with any emergencies.

In my previous team, it was very different. The rule was that for periods when lots of people wanted to be off, the people who'd had that same period off the previous year were lowest priority. There was a move to prioritise leave in school holidays for parents of school age children, but that was quickly knocked on the head when 2 colleagues pointed out that would mean that some people would never be able to go on holiday with their partners who worked in education.

First come, first served is brutal, but not unfair.