To think my company's way of requesting annual leave is OTT?

[rig]

To request annual leave at my company we have to:

• Email our project leads, asking for the dates after checking it doesn't conflict with any major deadlines or crunch points
• Ask our entire team if it's ok, and ask colleagues if they can pick up the work whilst we are off so that we arrange who will cover for us
• Ask our managers for approval
• Ask HR for the time off

AIBU to think that's OTT? I need to request a single day of holiday leave soon and it's such a hassle... It's a standard office job. In my previous job it was simply a matter of requesting it on the system which went straight to our manager who would approve or deny it. It was our manager's job to ensure they didn't approve too many people to have their annual leave at the same time.

Yes OTT

yanbu. Can you email everyone simultaneously?

I would have to leave ….couldn’t stay in a job that made me jump through hoops like that

OMG! That sounds like a nightmare just for one day off OP. I can understand to some extent when it's annual holidays, although it still rather smacks of management being too lazy to manage, expecting the staff to do all the hard work for them, whereas it should be simple management to organise staff time off. Can you raise it with HR?

This is ridiculous.

What a palaver. As a manager, I expect it to be my responsibility to check these things. We have a spreadsheet where we all record our leave, so that when we’re working on cross-departmental projects, we can check there’s enough folks about. If I approve too many people off at once, then that’s my fault, and I need to resolve the situation. Would any of that help?

That’s ridiculous. Have they not heard of Leave Planner?

It sounds like a way designed to put people off

Yeah that’s really OTT.

We just submit a request to HR and they ask the manager to agree or not. The manager checks whether staffing is ok etc.

if I have meetings booked I either rearrange them or ask a colleague to cover it (then I will happily repay the favour when they need cover).

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this. We used to email everyone at once but that resulted in nobody replying and then you'd be in limbo waiting for every person to confirm it was ok for you to take that leave.

I agree that surely it's the manager's responsibility to manage workloads?

The only thing I'd find odd would be basically having to arrange your own cover, and begging asking colleagues if you can be off. Feels OTT and a bit of conflict.

It makes sense if you have projects with managers separate from your line manager, that you check with them as well as your manager that there is no major conflicts - but also depends how much influence you can have over your deadlines.

Is HR actually able to decline it? It also makes sense to me that hr 'approve' in saying you have enough holiday, and registering it.

My holiday process is checking the team calender that there are no conflicts - I.e. 2 people already off - not necessarily an instant refusal but probably not a 'just-because' day. Asking my manager - normally verbally - and they tend to confirm there and then. Then with approval, booking it on the hr system - where my manager approves it (because its a faff to decline), and then I put it in the team calender.

Technically I could just put on the hr system but as a team, this is easier.