How do you request annual leave?

[maxpower]

Does your employer manage requests first come first served or do they allocate you your leave? Or do you have a different system?

Staff request leave.
I'm a team lead and there's usually an element of first come first served, but I try to make sure the same person doesn't get the plum holiday dates every year. If someone puts in for a full year's worth of dates for the whole year, I normally check if anyone else wants the popular dates and - so far - people have discussed it among themselves, agreed not to overlap completely and managed to avoid having the key people being off at the same time.

Our online leave system goes down at the end of each leave year, so I often ask staff to email me ahead, with their preferences, to kind of provisionally 'book' their preferred slot. If there are no clashes I let them know and ask them to book via the online system as soon as the system allows.

A lot of luck is involved in keeping everyone happy!

First come first served, but members of the team who couldn't be off at the same time will generally discuss with each other first before putting in request.
Asking for 3+ weeks for one holiday needs to be approved higher up than team lead.
It helps that schools seem to have different holidays so both myself and colleague can take off half term week without clashing.

Same as PP's, first come first served.

This has not worked too well this year as 2 members of staff went online the day after the online booking system opened and booked the same fortnight. A third member of staff (at the same grade) who wasn't quite so quick off the mark later had the same fortnight refused and had a meltdown in front of the whole office.

I can see what will happen next year - one minute past midnight and everyone will be booking their holidays!

I tell my manager what day(s) I'd like off, sometimes literally the day before, she okays it and I then enter it into the system after I've had the annual leave. She'd only ever refuse a request if it was absolutely essential that we were in for whatever reason. I'm aware that this is not the norm but luckily it is in my team.

The holiday system we use is a pain in the arse when it comes to reclaiming A/L if staff were sick over A/L so we all enter our holiday after the fact to be safe.

Thanks

first come/first served but we have to arrange our own cover.
for peak periods the dice come out...

We have a holiday spreadsheet. I ask my team to look at who else is on leave at the time they want leave and let me know, so I can see if their woke can be covered. If it is work that can be left formant while they are off, it is easier. Summer holidays and Christmas, all team members submit their requests to our senior manager who checks that there is sufficient office cover - this can be as simple as one team leader working from home - and most requests are granted.

*dormant and work not formant and woke

FFS

We do it online and its first come, first served and only one person off at a time
We are also restricted during busy periods and can't have more than 2 weeks off at a time
We also can only have 2 days off over Christmas and new year

Ours is already written into our yearly contract so you have no say but you can swop with someone else if you need to change it.