Vacation Refused
sanua
13 Posts
Has anyone run into this before? Our policy on vacation states that we max out at 200 hours. Staff see their accrued vacation hours on their paystubs and most are very good at taking their vacation and not maxing out. A few times staff have maxed out and stopped accruing vacation hours just because they didn't want the time off. However, now we have a staff person who reached his max, requested time off and his supervisor denied the vacation request because we were short staffed (this was back in October). The supervisor states that since October she has not been able to spare this staff person. Now the supervisor wants to pay him out the vacation time he would have accrued (about 50 hours). I'd like to know how other businesses might have handled this type of situation. Thanks for any input!
Comments
I don't believe the problem is going to go away by paying him out the 50 hours that he should have accrued since October. Until you allow him to use some of his vacation time or go over the 200 hour max, you're going to continue to have this problem month after month.
So in your case, I would say it depends on if you have your policy in writing and have distributed it to the employees, if they have been notified of their vacation balances periodically during the year...if so, they should have planned ahead because as in all business, the workload is the priority. However, if they have had notification of some sort during the year, you can be hardnosed or allow it to be extended one time only and the time be scheduled for use at the supervisor and the employee's discretion.
I think that it is always best to warn employees what to expect and then hold them accountable whether it be in a policy or a memo but definitely in writing.
[url]http://www.hr.state.ks.us/home/html/ffaq.htm[/url]
That being said, does your company have a policy for cashing out vacation? Either expressly allowing it or expressly disallowing it? Go to your policies first. If you have nothing addressing this issue, I would put something together right away. In our company, we only allow folks with 3 weeks of vacation to cash out a portion of their time (up to one week of vacation - they have to use the rest). Everyone else is subject to use it or lose it - we don't even roll it over. Our philosophy (and it really depends on each individual company) is that we want people to take time away from work - it refreshes them & makes them more productive overall. It also makes the administration of the vacation time extremely easy & it's easy to work into our budget the estimated indirect wages for the year. There is a flip side to this policy of use it or lose it in that it does mean our folks are away from work and we consequently temporarily lose their productivity during their vacation time - but that argument isn't strong enough for us to change our company philosophy. I hope that makes sense. Good luck.
For morale purposes, it is unfair to max a vacation for an ees and then refused to allow them to use the benefit. I would pay him the 50 hours. Then, I would try to pin the supervisor down to a period of time when the ee could take a vacation (Sarcastically, I have the feeling the supervisor does not want to be pinned down). At this company, we have learned from experience that everyone should have a vacation (for their sake and for the good of the company). Finally, you have to rethink your vacation policy and possibly change it or tweak it a little bit.
Nobody is so indispensible that he can't take off a week in a five-month period. What if he got hit by a bus and missed two weeks of work? What if he quit tomorrow? (And who would blame him?) Would the department fall to pieces? If the supervisor hasn't trained anyone as his backup, she should have to cover for him.
Not that I have a strong opinion about this...
James Sokolowski
HRhero.com