How to Schedule and Control the Vacations of Your Team
Building successful teams and fostering employee performance at the highest level are continual goals for project managers. We must remember, though, that the people we work with grow fatigued and require breaks. Everyone does, in fact, need a break, and among full-time employees, regular vacation is by far the most common way to get one. If you see that a member of your team hasn’t taken a vacation in a while, I advise that you speak with them and convince them that they need a break. If this doesn’t happen, people can burn out, which would lead to poor performance, low motivation, and even illness.
However, there is another side to the story. The capacity of your team is impacted when a team member takes a vacation. If several workers on a small project take time off at once, the effect could be very negative. In fact, the disorganized leaves could seriously harm your endeavor. You should properly manage your team members’ vacation schedules and arrange their leave in advance to avoid losing track of your project.
How to organize and oversee the vacations of your staff
Here are some suggestions on how to properly schedule your team’s vacations so that the success of your project is not jeopardized:
Establish some guidelines when booking a trip.
Your team members must agree to these guidelines and be aware of them completely. It makes sense to develop these guidelines in a separate team meeting if you don’t already have any. You can discuss each rule at this meeting, as well as vote for or against it. You can also explain why each rule is necessary. The following guidelines are among the most crucial ones to establish with your team:
- Personnel from the same department are not permitted to take vacations concurrently
- Vacation approval is prioritized for those who book their trips first
- Anyone planning a vacation must notify management and coworkers at least two weeks before the start of the trip
- Everyone who takes a vacation must put up an out-of-office email notification stating the dates of their trip and who will be filling in for them while they are away
This list of ground rules can certainly be expanded based on the requirements of your company.
Start or end your business year with a preliminary vacation planning exercise
In actuality, hardly many people are certain of their plans for the next six months or beyond. Nevertheless, you want to hold a team meeting to review the ground rules and go over the basic plans of each team member.
Pay close attention to all yearly holidays that are declared
There are a few annual holidays that are recognized as official days off. There may be several days off in a row during this time, as well as days that are close to weekends. Many people prefer to take additional vacation days in these circumstances in order to extend their vacation. These dates should be known to you as the project manager so that you may organize your team’s departures accordingly.
Maintain a calendar of the team’s vacations
A particular program like IceHrm can be used to manage the leave calendar. The sole prerequisite for this program or template is that it provides you with a solid visual representation of the team vacation schedule, allowing you to view on one screen both a list of the entire staff and a calendar of their vacations, at the very least for the upcoming quarter.
Tips by Icehrm.com, A promising digital HR platform
