Booking and Approving Leave

Most leave problems in small businesses are not about entitlement. They are about two people being off at once and nobody noticing until the morning.

The minimum process

Request in writing, which can be a form, an email or a message — but the same channel every time.

One place where requests land, not scattered across chats.

Approval recorded, with the date.

The balance updated when it is approved, not when the leave is taken.

Visible to the team, at least as a shared calendar of who is off when.

Five steps. Anything more elaborate will be bypassed.

The three rules that prevent coverage problems

Check the calendar before approving, not the entitlement. Someone can have plenty of days left and still be the third person off that week.

Set a limit per team per period — how many can be off at once — and state it in advance rather than deciding each time.

Block out the periods you cannot cover, and say so at the start of the year rather than refusing requests as they arrive.

Notice periods

State one, proportionate to the length of leave. A common approach is twice the length of the leave requested.

With discretion for the obvious exceptions, which is most of the value of having a small business.

And a stated response time. A request that sits unanswered for three weeks is the thing people complain about, more than refusals.

Refusing

Do it promptly and say why.

Keep a record of refusals as well as approvals. A pattern of one person's requests being refused is something you want to notice yourself rather than have pointed out.

Offer an alternative where possible, which turns a refusal into a negotiation.

Never refuse retrospectively. Approving and then withdrawing after someone has booked flights is the situation that ends in a grievance.

Disputes about balances

Almost all of them come from the same cause: the person's understanding and the record disagree, and nobody checked.

Publish the balance so people can see it and query it early.

Recalculate rather than defend when someone queries it. They are right often enough that starting from the assumption they are wrong is a poor position.

Keep the working, so the same query does not need answering twice.

Response time is the thing people notice

More than approval rates.

State one — three working days is common — and meet it.

A request sitting unanswered for three weeks is the complaint that comes up in exit conversations, far more than refusals do.

Set a reminder for yourself if there is no system to do it.

And answer promptly even when the answer is no, which people accept far better than silence.

Turn the principle into a test

For an example that can make this requirement testable, consult the agency use case. Treat the page as a starting point rather than proof: reproduce the workflow with real roles, exceptions and permissions.

Independent reference

For an external point of reference, see the ACAS website. Its employment guidance can provide a neutral cross-check for notice rules, refusals and consistent handling.