Especially around summertime and the holidays, it is time to start thinking about scheduling employee vacations. If you are a novice to managing employee vacation schedules, you might think jotting down the days employees are out on the calendar is sufficient. If this is not your first rodeo then you know that it is much more complicated than this.

Here are five simple rules to follow when scheduling employee vacations.

Rule #1 Consider Staffing Level Needs

Look at the business cycle of your business. Depending on the type of business you have, sometimes of the year are busier than other times of the year, which are the times when you want to limit the number of employees who are out of the office on vacation. You can even make it off limits for employees to take vacations at all during this period.

On the flip-side, sometimes of the year are super slow, so you can even consider shutting down the company for that week or a few days so that everyone can take vacation during that period.

Rule #2 Access Vacation Time

While approving vacation requests, pull up each employee’s vacation time allotment. Verify that the employee has the number of days of vacation available that you are approving for an employee vacation. It can create a big problem if you approve vacation days that an employee does not have on the books.

Rule #3 Use a Vacation Tracking System

Numerous time and attendance tracking systems exist. Find one and use it. These systems have built-in features that take the difficulty out of scheduling and managing employee vacations. Additionally, these systems track all kinds of time and attendance for employees that go beyond vacation days and even integrate with other systems you use in your business.

Rule #4 Generate a Vacation Policy

Spell out precisely how employees earn vacation time and how many sick days and personal days each employee has per year. Clearly, state any other rules or policies that pertain to when employees can take vacation. Include the procedure employees have to go through to request and receive approval for time off.

Rule #5 Create a Vacation Request Process

Create a vacation request form, so employees know the process they have to go through to request vacation days. This can be a paper form or an electronic form. If you employ a vacation tracking system, these forms tend to be electronic, automated and built into the system.

Follow these simple five rules for scheduling employee vacations so managing time out of the office becomes much faster and easier for everyone to handle.

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