Staff Holiday/Leave/Paid Time Off Overview

Understanding Holiday

We understand that holidays are managed differently depending on the company, so at StaffSavvy we offer a wide variety of options to encompass this. In this article, we will go through the differences between types of holiday and leave.

What is holiday?

Holiday (also known as /leave/paid time off) is the time off that staff members can request throughout the year. Holiday is managed by Contract, so each contract can have distinct rules when it comes to managing holiday. To make changes to Holiday, you will need to edit a Contract from the Manage Contracts page and then go to the Holiday tab.

Holiday VS Taking time off

StaffSavvy has several methods of calculating holiday pay depending on how you want to manage holiday. If you select one of our built-in holiday options, staff will receive a holiday allowance, which will affect the holiday they are able to request and keep them aware of how much holiday they have to take. 

If your staff member does not have a contract, or the contract that they are on has disabled holiday or is using the pay holiday as a percentage of wages option, staff will instead take time off. They won’t have a holiday allowance; they can simply request time off and, if accepted, won’t be available for shifts.

Taking time off

If you prefer to keep your holiday separate and not manage it within StaffSavvy, you can choose to disable pay. Staff will still be able to request leave/time off, but they will not receive holiday pay.

Another option that is slightly more involved, without using holiday calculations, is to use the Pay holiday as a percentage of hours in wage sheets option. This option allows staff to get paid for hours worked, as well as getting paid a percentage of their hours (as holiday pay). For example, a common option would be 12.07% of hours worked calculated at the Holiday Rate. For more information on how to set this up, check out our article here.

Staff can still request time off, but this will not use any holiday entitlement because they are already receiving their additional holiday pay alongside their regular wage as they accumulate hours. This type of holiday can be useful for irregular-hours workers and part-year workers, as it allows them to 'accrue' (build up) holidays.

Holiday 

Alternatively, you can use our Holiday calculation options. There are two main types of paid holidays managed by StaffSavvy:

Fixed Entitlement - This is a fixed amount of holiday a staff member receives at the start of the year and can book any time during the year.

Earned Entitlement - This is a holiday earned per hour worked. It is either immediately paid out or stored so the staff member can claim it in the future.

These can be further split into four types of holiday entitlements based on the following questions. Do you want staff to earn holiday pay as they go or receive a fixed amount at the start of the year? How do you want them to be able to request that holiday? You can choose from the following options:

• Earn holiday based on hours worked and claim with a holiday request
• Earn holiday based on pro-rata entitlement and claim with a holiday request   
• Fixed yearly entitlement (prorated based on contract start/end dates)
• Yearly entitlement based on previous weeks of work

For more information about these holiday entitlements, check out our article here. If you are still unsure which type of holiday is right for you, consult our chart below.

If holiday is enabled, the system is able to calculate holiday allowances and inform staff and managers how much entitlement a staff member has on the holiday requests page, making it easier to keep track of entitlement when holiday requests come through. 

Each type of holiday entitlement has different set-up requirements, with some options requiring you to also set up additional pay elements. 

To learn more about setting up our fixed entitlements, check out our set-up articles here:

Setting up Fixed Yearly Entitlement (Pro-rata)

Setting up Yearly Entitlement (based on previous weeks of work)

To learn more about setting up our earned entitlements, check out our set-up articles here:

Setting up Earn & Claim (Pro-rata) Holiday Entitlement

Setting up Earn & Claim (Hours Worked) Holiday Entitlement

Once you have chosen an entitlement and configured it for the Contract you are working on, staff members will be able to request time off.

Requesting Holiday

How does a staff member take time off? Staff members are able to request holiday themselves, or managers are able to request time off on behalf of a staff member.

Requesting holiday as a Staff Member

Requesting a holiday as a staff member is a simple process. Just go to My Account > My Availability >  Request Holiday and set the period of time you want to take off. Once you have specified the time period, you can also include a reason for absence for your manager to see and go on to review your request.

Here, you can double-check that you have booked off the correct days and that you are ensuring your planned absence is within the limits of your available holiday. You can also see how much holiday you will have left over once your request is confirmed. For more detail about how to add holiday as a staff member, check out our step-by-step guide on adding holiday. This will give you information on how to add holiday, request half days as holiday and cancel holiday requests.

Adding holiday on behalf of an employee

You can grant permission to certain managers so that they can create holiday requests on behalf of their staff. See the permission called Add holiday / Time off requests on behalf of staff. This allows requests to be added via the staff member’s profile page. Just click on Actions > Holidays and Absence > Add Holiday Request. Remember, Holiday requests will be automatically blocked if they would leave a negative balance.

The request is in two steps: provide the basic information, such as reason and dates, first and then confirm the request and holiday shifts. From this request, StaffSavvy will suggest a series of holiday shifts. Unselecting the shifts will recalculate the holiday required and holiday remaining totals at the bottom. For a more detailed guide on adding holiday as a manager, check our article here.

Blocking negative requests

This can be disabled under each contract's settings for contracts that come under Fixed yearly salaries, with a set holiday limit measured annually. To find this, go to Pay > Contracts > Manage Contracts > Choose the contract you want to edit > Holiday.

Approving Holiday

Once a staff member has made a request, it will appear as a holiday request needing approval on a manager's dashboard. Holiday Requests needing approval can also be viewed via Reports > Staff Reports > Holiday Approval. Then, you can choose whether to approve or reject a request.

Requests are split into time-off requests, holiday requests and holiday request cancellations. Time-off requests will provide detailed information about the request, including who has requested time off, the dates and duration of the request and the reason for taking time off. It will also let you know how many days have been booked off already by that staff member, as well as if there are any other staff members with the same skill who have requested holiday at the same time.

You can also see how many staff members are left remaining with the same Skill if the request is approved. This can be useful to know for Skills that are more specialist. Additionally, you can see how many shifts will be affected.

Managers can also choose the order in which they view all holiday requests they must approve. The default is in order of start date, but you can also choose the oldest request first and several other options, including name, length, and end date.

From here, you can then reject or approve the shift. To quickly approve requests where shifts aren’t affected, you can use the select requests that don’t affect shifts option. If there are shifts that will be affected, you need to decide whether to post shifts for cover (holiday only approved once cover is found), cancel shifts, repost as extra or offered shifts, or leave the shifts as they are.

Tentative Approval

When approving a holiday, if the staff member has shifts and they are not cancelled or reposted for cover* (so the shifts remain assigned to them), then their holiday will be marked as tentatively approved. It will automatically change to 'approved' when they find cover for those shifts.

(If a holiday is cancelled, it will then restore any regular repeating shifts that were cancelled for the holiday. This will restore their previous regular repeating shift pattern.)

*Shifts can also be offered to staff rather than automatically becoming extra shifts. Please note this change can be made by a manager.

Viewing Holiday

Now that we have reviewed how to add and approve holiday, we will go into where you can view holiday once approved. Holiday will come up when you are viewing Manage Shift Schedule. You can also view booked holiday from a staff member's profile under booked holiday. For an overview of all upcoming holiday, it can be helpful to use the Absence Calendar.

Absence Calendar

The Absence Calendar view displays all upcoming staff holidays. This can be found under Reports > Staff Reports > Absence Calendar. This page displays all absences but can be customised to only show holiday leave.

From this page, you can customise your view so that you can only see staff that you have access to, or who directly report to you. Other options available are to filter by the type of contract (casual, permanent, venue staff, etc.).  You can filter by absence type as well, which can be helpful when looking for absences or TOIL requests specifically. These have all been colour-coded to simplify visibility.

Each holiday will be shown as a coloured bar across the page (corresponding to absence type). Absences that are still ‘open’ are now shown with a dotted line to indicate that they are ongoing. This will change automatically once the staff member has returned or indicated when they will be returning.

The calendar view also shows the time of day the request starts and finishes, so you can see who is available at any one time and if there is a period when staff are not available.