When it comes to annual leave requests, it can sometimes be difficult to manage, especially during busy holiday periods such as Christmas, Ramadan, or summer months. Of course, most of us want to enjoy these times off, to relax and spend time with family and friends. As a Pharmacy Manager or Pharmacy owner, these can often be daunting times and can impede on your day to day. As an employer, you will often face the difficult task of dealing with multiple leave requests, refusing leave, and canceling pre-approved holidays.

Of course, you can only hope your staff understands that the needs of the business come first, however, this can cause your staff to feel overwhelmed and disgruntled. That is why expectation management is key!

Expectation Management? What is this?

Humans are very much patterned based. We form habits easily and don’t like disruption to what we become accustomed to. If your pharmacy sets out workplace rules which let the employee know how much leave must be booked, how many consecutive days can be booked at a time and how much notice is required, then you can avoid unnecessary disappointment from pharmacists, technicians and dispensers.

We have put together some top tips on how to deal with holiday leave and sick leave requests.

Be Organised!

Being organised and pre-planning is key for avoiding disappointment amongst your Pharmacy Team. If everyone wants to have the same day off, you could grant leave on a first come first serve basis. However, the issues around this often fall with disagreements between staff and the inability to collaborate with one another to ensure leave requests are handled. Unfortunately, paper-based processes, whilst convenient, can also be deemed counterproductive and a heightened GDPR and compliance risk.

Counter-Notice!

Being inundated with leave requests can really impede on your ability to manage your pharmacy and can sometimes be overlooked, leaving them sitting unapproved. This not only looks disorganized on you, but it creates a bad experience for your staff. When refusing annual leave, you must give your employee a fair counter-notice. The length of the notice must be equivalent to the period of leave that the employee was trying to book.

Passing Ownership

A study undertaken by Mckinsey Global Institute (MGI), found that switching to digital management typically increases productivity by 25%, allowing you to manage visibility and employee approval. By passing ownership across to your staff to manage their own leave through a robust system, allows them to take responsibility for their own leave requests, through a visual system which takes responsibility from you and provides your employees with a more motivated and productive outlook and work ethic.

At Locate A Locum, we provide a digital solution and alternative to paper-based products through our advanced rota based digital software. Our leave product allows you to submit leave, track totals and approve/decline leave requests. By removing your paper-based processes, you are able to increase your leave accuracy so that you avoid disappointment among staff and increase your leave accuracy.

The Leave product also gives you improved control and gives your staff the autonomy to manage their own leave requests leading to a more satisfied and engaged workforce. By eliminating 100% of your paper-based processes, you are able to reduce GDPR risks and increase your staff engagement by 90%. Our leave product also allows managers to add 'leave allowances' and provides them with the ability to block out fixed holidays such as Bank Holidays.

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Thanks for reading, have a great day!
Locate a Locum Team