Annual Leave

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New team of 14 people to manage. Held my first team meeting and suggested that people try and talk to each other first before booking leave over the summer holidays so if one team members wanted say a Friday off then check with their collegues to see if there are enough people in to cover the work on that particular Friday. Within half an hour had an email from senior management saying the team have made a complaint and that I was wrong to do this as I am the manager and I should deal with leave requests not the team. Am I really in the wrong ????

all united in reaching our goal
Our goal or your goal? Look at it from their point of view, not yours.

I understand what you were hoping to achieve- but it’s your job not theirs. If Tom checks around that he can have Friday off, but sally and Jane say no we have a more important date, here’s an impasse. They should apply, you should allocate, they can try to negotiate if they are declined with a team members if it’s that important. I hope the rest of the meeting went better!

I get where you're coming from OP but think it's best if you manage it. Set up a spreadsheet with cell for each date and once leave is approved for a date put that staff member's initials in that cell. If everyone has access to the spreadsheet they can see how many are on leave before requesting it.

You’re not being unreasonable to suggest it, but this team have clearly decided that it doesn’t work for them.

If they want a framework, give it to them but it might not be as flexible as what you were suggesting. Ask HR for your annual leave policy and ask them for guidance on how to implement a process- if you do need to consult the union, you’ll be advised to.

In addition, I’d also ask them for advice on addressing how to communicate with the team that if they have any issues to try and raise it with you first before dashing to senior management. It would ring alarm bells with me that they didn’t raise this with you in the first instance.

It's inappropriate for team members to have to agree leave between themselves. You will always have more dominant/more whiny/more demanding people in any group and investing authority in a separate person who has a duty to be fair is one way of dealing with that. You effectively kicked off your tenure saying you wanted to shirk that responsibility. Not cool.

There are lots of different ways a manager can decide to deal with it if lots of people want the same time off. First come first served is valid. You can also have a system which allows popular times off (eg Christmas and school holidays) to be decided by random lot between those that want them. You can get your team to have a strict rota for having first pick of holiday dates each quarter. All sorts. What you can't do is wash your hands of it all and tell them to sort it out among themselves.

I see lots of problems with your proposed approach. 13 colleagues is a lot to negotiate with. I wouldn’t want to explain why I wanted a certain day off. Some people get their own way because they shout louder or manipulate people, it wouldn’t be fair on quieter members of the team to get railroaded. Leave requests should be managed centrally to ensure fairness and transparency.

“Perhaps the union rep has gone in heavy handed in response to the OP going in heavy handed?”

Nothing in the OP suggests she’s been heavy handed in her approach- naive, maybe but not a bull in a china shop.

I’ve been a union rep and we were always advised to try and build a decent working relationship with management, especially new managers, so any future issues could be resolved informally or to act as a sounding board for suggested changes.

That rep has potentially alienated a new manager by sending what seems like a fairly intimidating email instead of offering support and information about what the actual internal policy is.

interesting comments about this being basic management and to go on a course etc. Aren't we moving away from management and into leadership in 2108 and we all know a leader bring's their team along with them . A Google search to show a difference between a leader and a manager may help to show what I am trying to achieve. Thanks for all of the other ideas and feedback as well.

A: “I’m taking Friday off. Is that OK with everybody?”

B: “No, I wanted Friday off. My mother is ill and I’m going to see her.”

A: “Well I’m sorry but I said it first so I’m going to take the day.”

B: “ You bastard. Don’t you care about the fact my mother is sick?”

Repeated over and over.

Unfortunately part of being a manger is having to be the bad guy from time to time. You can’t push that responsibility on to your team.

Have a simple, strict system. Request holiday in writing, reply to holiday requests in isolation in the order in which they arrive in your inbox, allocate holiday.

If there’s a clash, they are allowed to try to ask the person who already has holiday allocated to swap, but no pressure should be applied. Anyone is allowed to say no and that’s the end of it.

I wouldn’t be happy with that system as the more dominant members of the team would get their own way more.

Aren't we moving away from management and into leadership in 2108 and we all know a leader bring's their team along with them

Honestly, I just think this is corporate gobbledygook. Managers still have to mange. You can’t really be pally with people when you’re managing them. There’s got to be a clear distinction between those managing and those not managing.

I'd be fuming that they decided to go over your head and complain instead of talking to you about this issue. That just shows a lack of respect to me.

But OP, even a leader needs to make shitty, unpopular calls at times.

Have you got a mentor at work? It sounds a bit like you’ve been given this role and expected to get on with it without a lot of guidance- management is a skill like any other and it needs to be learnt as well. No one can reasonably expect you to walk in and start Richard Branson-ing on day 1.

It's your job to manage leave

In fact isn't it in your job description?

Leaving people to sort it amongst themselves is pathetic.

There are plenty of times to exhibit leadership, but ensuring you have enough staff in the workplace at any one time isnt one of them. That's about managing, setting expectations and having a clear process in place, particularly if staff cant/wont manage it themselves.

This is how it works in my team of about 12.

The people who do most of the running round and the legwork have to ask the whole team for objections to leave. The people who look busy and do little just put theirs down as gospel.

There are a collection of people in this group who work compressed hours so take random days off in the month but all on a Friday and all at the same time.

There are people like me who give up and cut their hours to get a break and the chance of a fair deal.

Having the team decide doesn't work in my experience, but it would if people were fair and reasonable.

It is fair and reasonable to assume a lot of people are not fair and reasonable.

They are wankers

I believe this to be the managers role. You keep record of who's off when and approve or decline leave based on staff numbers that day. Staff shouldn't be expected to sort it out themselves and manager should know who's in or out. Maybe see how other managers manage it, policy etc and go from there
A spreadsheet with staff annual leave allowances and days booked would help ensure they take their correct amount of leave and use your calendar to log who's in our out that day for easy checking for approval

I take on board what you are all saying I was bought in to sort out this team paid a nice decant wage to do a job that no one else wanted ! I have always managed and lead in this way and never had an issue from a union rep or from my manager but this has knocked me wide awake at this time of night when I need to be up at 5am .

Absolutely you need to be a Leader but you also need to manage the day-to-day stuff. I agree with PPs that asking a team of 14 to manage their own leave requests is asking for trouble.

Have a look at how it has been done previously and see whether that system could work for you. It's not unusual to have a maximum number of people on holiday on a particular week but you should ensure that the system for submitting holiday requests is fair and transparent.

Also, with 14 people it's not always going to suit everyone. You could stipulate only 2 people off at a time, and 'first come first served', but if Bertha gets in first with her request for 4 weeks of the summer holidays where does that leave everyone else? And what happens when Ethel is off work and comes back to find that the only weeks she can take are in January and November and she knows that Bertha had all of the school holidays last year and the year before.

I would ask for help from other managers in similar roles and also check in with the team to see what has happened previously. Holidays, like pay, are very emotive and if you get it wrong you risk setting yourself up for a hard time.

What youve asked of them is completely reasonable. We've been asked them same - our smaller team and the other bigger team too. We have a spreadsheet/shared calendars we can check. Obvs we can ask the question but understand if it's a problem. The bigger team work on first come first served/case by case and they're asked to put hols down asap for following year (a lot of them have school age kids/work pt). Plus as long as there's skeleton staff then it's ok and if you are rota'd on a certain duty then you seek to arrange cover yourself in the first instance.

As a leader and a manager i manage leave requests.

It works well.

With a team of 14 it should be manageable to put in each other's calendars. So for eg when I book annual leave, I post it into the outlook calendars of everyone in my team (as free time). This means everyone can already see who is off that day, and also on that day we know why so-and-so isn't in.

I feel like leave is very firmly in your court. I can see how they may have thought you were just trying to palm it off on them, even if that’s not what you intended. There really needs to be some sort of centralized system of how many can take time off at a time and who gets the leave in various unplanned situations etc. Leaving it to everyone to decide between themselves just creates an issue and takes the responsibility off you. It’ll pointlessly cause conflict and stronger personalities may simply win out better leave opportunities (eg. around christmas and summer holidays) as there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or rhythm to it.

It’s not a team building opportunity, it’s simply something that needs to be done and it’s your job to do it.

I think it depends on the nature of the team but I don't think what OP proposed is completely unreasonable. It's roughly how it works in my work place for peak periods. First come first serve doesn't always work out fairly as its usually the same people who get their choice that way. I've know workplaces were people have been coming in at 6am on the first day holiday can be booked for summer.

OP the big concern here is this is a massive overaction from your team - senior management and the union without talking to you first? Did anyone object in the meeting and you shout them down? I'd be worried this tactic is going to be used fit every change.

I've been a union rep too. Massive overreaction and, unless you had an unusual workplace policy, straight wrong! You can say max two people can be off at once and deny anyone else Ieave unless they sort cover. It's not like the who team can dictate leave so 99% of them are off on the same day and you just have to 'manage workload'.

My first thoughts on reading your initial posts was that there was a lot of backstory to this.

The scenarios I thought of were - is this a new team that you are responsible for setting up? (start as you mean to go on, but do you need to establish relationships within the team?) Is this a team functioning well that you are now responsible for? (don't change things that are working already) Is this a team that doesn't work well and you are being asked to fix things?

Since you have clarified that it is more of the latter situation, that influences things. A team that is in some ways dysfunctional will not necessarily cope with "for goodness' sake talk to each other like grownups and sort things out", even though that seem reasonable. If it was a smaller group then frank talking like that on some issues might be appropriate to try, but 14 is too many. And now their over-the-top straight-to-the-union response tells you more about what you are dealing with.

So, where to go from here? I think you need to find out from all of them what is working, what is not, what the problems are - from their perspective. At the same time you can be defining what problems you see yourself, because yes both sets of problems will need sorting out.

My suggestion, if you haven't already done something similar, is that you need to prioritise individual meetings to find out what each member of your team wants and needs, what they think are the urgent problems, what they like and want to stay the same. I'd try to do those meetings within as short a period as possible, and focus on listening yourself (don't give anyone any ammunition to complain again). Then sit down and create a brief summary of what you think is going on, with possible solutions based as far as possible on ideas others have mentioned.

After all that, have another team meeting. Feed back "you have all told me that ..." and "some great suggestions on dealing with it are ..." And then see what happens?

I don't know enough about how discussions with union reps are supposed to work. If you don't either then seek urgent advice on that specifically. It might be, for example, that a discussion with the rep after your individual meetings and before the team meeting, would be appropriate and helpful.

Good luck!