How do you create a Time-off Policy

17 Dec, 2013 | Tags: bar scheduling software, conflict free schedules, Employee Schedule, Employee schedule calendar, employee schedule template, Employee Schedules, Employee Scheduling, employee scheduling programs, Employee Scheduling Software, hospital scheduling software, hotel scheduling software, job schedule, Job scheduling, Job Scheduling Software, Medical Scheduling, Medical Scheduling Software, online employee scheduling software, Online Restaurant Scheduling Software, online scheduling program, restaurant schedules, restaurant scheduling software, Retail Scheduling, Scheduling Software, Scheduling tools, Staff Scheduling, Staff Scheduling Software, What Time do I Work, Whattimedoiwork.com, Work Scheduling, Workforce Scheduling

For many companies, managing vacation and time-off requests is a constant challenge. You need to maintain adequate business coverage and support while understanding that your employees have times when they need to take time off.  The outcome of not having a formal policy in place about when and how to submit requests results in employees asking for time off by:

• Talking to you in the hallway or your office
• Calling you on the phone
• Sending you an email
• Scribbling the days and dates on a piece of paper and dropping it on your desk
• Taping a note to your office door

These types of requests are not only hard to deal with on the fly, becasue of the no boundaries on “acceptable ways to request time off,” but you are also tasked with trying to keep track of who requested what time off. And if you have two employees requesting the same days off, who gets first dibs?

There are many different options and ways to create policies, but the most common in the service and health industries is to create a “time-off bank.” Here’s how the bank works. Let’s say each employee is allowed 160 hours off each year, which equates to 20 work days. The bank includes time off for:

• Holidays
• Vacation
• Sick days
• Personal days

You can’t always give all your employees all of the holidays off, so they can use their banked time to request  vacations or personal/sick days off. Each employee is responsible for scheduling the days he or she wants off from work, using a single prescribed method, within the needs of the business. You can require that requests are submitted for planned time off within 2 weeks of the date, and that they must submit requests on special forms that are filed away for you to refer to when creating upcoming schedules

This plan offers many benefits to employees. They can:

• Ensure that their time off request will not be forgotten
• Assume responsibility for their own time off; they make their own choices, and they need to abide by them. For example, some employees might prefer a day off for religious holidays, rather than the Fourth of July.
• Draw from their time-off bank for emergencies, such as caring for a sick child.  Remember, the bank is for all time off—holidays, vacation, sick days, and personal days.

The plan also offers many benefits to you. You will:

• Spend significantly less time managing time-off requests; all requests will come to you through the standard form submitted in the “time-off request box”
• Create more accurate schedules that require fewer changes, as you no longer have to try to remember who asked for what time off?
• Empower your employees by letting them make more choices about how they spend their time away from work
• Create a more positive working atmosphere at your company

All of these ways are great, but they are still time consuming, especially when going through all the requests each time you make the schedule. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a way for the requests to be waiting for you right on the schedule? How about knowing when each request was submitted so that you can grant requests in a first come first serve method? The solution is available today from WhatTimeDoIWork.com and there are many other benefits far beyond tracking time-off requests and auto-populating them right into the schedule.

• Automatic alerts to scheduling conflicts and overtime hours
• Calculation of Labor costs as the schedule is created
• Posting of the Schedule online allowing employees easy access without picking up the phone
• Communications sent to your entire staff as soon as a new schedule is posted.

We are so sure that our software will solve your scheduling needs that we offer the first 30 days at no charge, with no obligation.

Learn more here.

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