[Joe Marconi]

I have employees that want to schedule and overlap vacation time around the holidays. Some want to schedule ALL their vacation time around ALL holidays. This is a constant struggle between being fair and balanced for all employees.

We are in a service business and during the holidays we are always busy.

I want to know how other shops handle this.

I know shop owners that will not anyone to schedule vacation time around a holiday.

Need advise...

[autoguy]

Joe Marconi, on Nov 24 2009, 08:38 AM, said:

I have employees that want to schedule and overlap vacation time around the holidays. Some want to schedule ALL their vacation time around ALL holidays. This is a constant struggle between being fair and balanced for all employees.

We are in a service business and during the holidays we are always busy.

I want to know how other shops handle this.

I know shop owners that will not anyone to schedule vacation time around a holiday.

Need advise...

That's a tough one and really depends on the size of your shop, the amount of employees you have, and if you can afford to not have one or two around the holidays.

I think it is reasonable to have black out dates for vacation.

[xrac]

autoguy, on Nov 24 2009, 07:49 AM, said:

That's a tough one and really depends on the size of your shop, the amount of employees you have, and if you can afford to not have one or two around the holidays.

I think it is reasonable to have black out dates for vacation.

I would not allow it, although I will work with an individual for an extra day or two off if I can accomodate it.

[Joe Marconi]

you make one general rule for everyone?

[xrac]

Joe Marconi, on Nov 24 2009, 01:25 PM, said:

you make one general rule for everyone?

It is stated in our employee handbook that vacations have to be scheduled at managements discretion or something like that. We tell everyone up front that vacation time cannot be taken at peak times. However, once I did allow one employee to take vacation at that time of year. To compensate we try to schedule holidays where at least one of our techs gets four days off if a holiday falls on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday. Once a month one of our techs has a scheduled three day weekend. We do this by rotating days off. Once a month a tech will have Saturday off this week and Monday off next week which gives them a long weekend. If a holiday falls on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday the lucky tech has a four day weekend which is very popular.

[Joe Marconi]

I understand the need for people to take time off, and we do rotate Saturdays for that purpose. But like you said, durning peak times (such as holidays) we need a full staff. We are in a service type business. it could be worse, we could be a business that requires us to be here on holidays.

I guess what I am looking for is a fair policy. I can't allow senior poeple to dictate when they take their vacaction. I think the problem started with me. Years ago when I was not as big, it was not an issue. Now, we have 14 people on staff and I want to make sure people don't feel like they are not being fairly treated.

[xrac]

Joe Marconi, on Nov 25 2009, 06:10 AM, said:

I understand the need for people to take time off, and we do rotate Saturdays for that purpose. But like you said, durning peak times (such as holidays) we need a full staff. We are in a service type business. it could be worse, we could be a business that requires us to be here on holidays.

I guess what I am looking for is a fair policy. I can't allow senior poeple to dictate when they take their vacaction. I think the problem started with me. Years ago when I was not as big, it was not an issue. Now, we have 14 people on staff and I want to make sure people don't feel like they are not being fairly treated.

The more people you have the harder it becomes. We only have seven people. If I had 14 I couldn't do some of the things we do now.

[Joe Marconi]

We are going thru some growing pains; the more people your have the more personalities there are. It becomes a challenge.