How to Formulate an Effective Vacation Policy

As an employer, you are not required to actually provide your employees vacation time. However, if you do provide vacation time to employees, Orange County workplace discrimination lawyers recommend a standard vacation policy in place that applies to all employees.

For one thing, you have to decide whether all employees in your organization will be eligible for vacation time. Do you plan to offer vacation time for temporary workers or part-time workers? Or will only permanent workers on the payroll be eligible for such paid vacation time?

Orange County workplace discrimination lawyers cannot stress enough the need for such policies to be watertight, and firmly established. Details of vacation time should be clearly mentioned in the employee’s handbook that is handed over to every employee at the time of joining the organization. It is also important that all policies related to vacation time be applied uniformly across the organization, without any exception. This helps avoid allegations of favoritism, discrimination or unfairness. All of these could be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit against you. Vacation policies must be laid out in writing.

It is a good idea to require that employees be employed in your organization for a certain period of time before they are eligible for paid vacation time. That helps set out clear guidelines and criteria that employees must meet, or comply with before they are eligible for a vacation.

Additionally, lay out the responsibilities of the employee who is going on vacation. Many organizations prefer to leave it to the employee to find a replacement, who will be responsible for their duties during the time that the employee is on vacation. In other organizations, employees are encouraged to complete their work duties before the vacation, so that there is no backlog of work waiting for them when they return to their desk.

Decide what type of policies work best for your organization, but make sure that employees know that they have a responsibility to ensure that their work is completed responsibly and in a timely manner without any backlog during the vacation.