Running a startup or SME is a wild ride and comes with a unique set of challenges.
With often small teams, tight budgets and staff wearing more hats than they can comfortably balance. Add to that the fact that the world around us is changing by the day, and you need to be constantly ready to pounce on new opportunities or get into gear to solve an emerging problem. This means your human resources must be on point, so that you never find yourself understaffed and caught short at a critical juncture.
A self-inflicted problem
Despite this need for agility, many companies still use a fixed leave year – eg 1 January to 31 December.
It’s a clear and longstanding tradition, but how many of us started a new job on 1 January? If you start mid-year, traditionally your leave is ‘prorated’, so instead of 28 days, you have just 14 – and only six months to use them. Mathematically fair, but annoying. It removes flexibility in a world that demands it more than ever.
And while we all understand ‘pro rata’ (kind of), do we still need to be speaking Latin in this day and age? We’re of course very grateful to the Romans (civilisation – thumbs up, no notes), but can’t we just… change the calendar?! Obviously, the Romans didn’t have Christmas and offices to contend with, or they might have preferred our solution: unique leave cycles for individual employees. But how would that work?
We have the answer - Aligning leave years with employee start dates. Available on Leave Dates Plus plan.
Scenario: The cost of a rigid leave calendar
A rapidly growing tech startup has had a corker of a year, winning clients left right and centre. Their staff have been heads down for months, excitedly working away at all kinds of projects. November rolls around before they know it, and they’re approached to pitch for building a ‘New year, new me’ app. It would be their biggest contract yet and needs to be ready to launch on January 1.
There’s just one problem – the company’s leave calendar resets on that date, and they’ve been so busy all year that most of their staff have leave left to use up. They’d been banking on things being quiet in December to give everyone a break. Annual leave is ‘use it or lose it’, and they couldn’t (legally or morally) ask their hardworking team to forgo their paid time off. Looking at the numbers, they just wouldn’t have the resources to deliver the project on time, despite having the staff, the skill and the ambition.
The contract goes to their smaller, but more agile, competitor. They’re worried that staff might jump ship, attracted to the more modern approach that better aligns with the values of an up-and-coming tech company.
They make a change and start using Leave Dates software to align employee leave cycles with their start date. As a fast-growing startup, they hired staff at a pretty steady rate in their first few years, with new hires every couple of months. This gives them an even spread of start dates – and leave resets – over the year.
How does it work?
This Leave Dates feature relies on one simple rule: your leave cycle starts on the day you do. To do this in your Plus subscription account, go to the employees settings page and find the relevant employee. On their profile tab, enter their start date and then tick the box that says ‘Align leave year to start date’. Yep, it’s that simple.
Quicker than calculating a part-time, pro rata holiday allowance for a start date in May, right?!
The bottom line
In this fluid, evolving and agile environment, rigid, traditional leave policy and processes can shackle you by causing predictable – and avoidable! – bottlenecks as staff scramble to take leave at the same time. If everyone’s leave allowance expires on the same date, there’s a high chance the office is going to be looking pretty sparse in the week prior. Loneliness will be the least of your problems if opportunity comes knocking that week.
Ironically, clever use of tech can actually make your company and work culture feel more human. Don’t be hampered by a logistical footnote. Personalising leave cycles is actually far simpler than having one cycle for everyone. There’s no need to calculate allowances, accruals, pro rata; and no race to use it all up by the same date means no bottlenecks, and no drop in service.
A small change can have a big impact.
