Home » Blog » Should we be letting our employees carry over holiday to the next year?

As a business owner, you really want your employees to be taking their holiday through the year and should do what you can to encourage this.  If employees to use their full annual leave entitlement it reduces the number with leave to carry over at the end of the year.

Our last blog showed how people are more productive is they use their holiday, so that is a good enough reason;  and if they do so they are also happier.

Here are four ways to avoid employees having carry over and making sure they use their full entitlement:

1. Have a clear policy

By setting out a clear policy and making holiday easy to book, you  create the understanding  that taking allotted holiday from work is encouraged. There is a reason that employees are given an annual leave allowance and it is important that business owners are seen as supporting their staff in their need for a holiday.

2. Make leave more visible with a streamlined system

Provide a way for your team to keep track of their holidays without having to come to management for clarification. This could be achieved by sending out monthly leave alerts via email or, for an anytime, anywhere solution, consider letting Breathehr do the work for you. It’s easy for employees to slip into a routine and forget to use up all of their annual leave until it’s too late. But by notifying them of their remaining allowance throughout the year, they’re far more likely to dip into it when alerted rather than letting it carry over.

3. Be happy when employees book time off

If your team get the impression that you don’t like them booking holidays, or make it awkward for them to do so, then they are less likely to want to book them. So, try to develop and show a genuine interest in what they’ll be doing with their time off, rather than showing concern about missed attendance. Remember, as we’ve shown, holidays help increase productivity.

4. Implement carry over limits

If you’ve decided to allow carry over in your annual leave policy then employees will be less reluctant to take their full holiday year entitlement. With no danger of missing out and no incentive to use up the entitlement in one year then leave is often forgotten about and just allowed to roll over into the next year.

The issue with the carry over process is that employees tend to store all of their holiday up, and then you can be left with employees who have a large build up of leave to use. Some carry over can be beneficial, and if you do decide to allow carry over then consider a limit as you don’t want employees abusing the system.

If you would like to find out more about Breathehr, please contact us on enquiries@HRBusCons.co.uk.

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