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LettersPay & benefitsHolidays and holiday pay

First-come, first-served holidays have limitations

by Personnel Today 18 Apr 2006
by Personnel Today 18 Apr 2006

One of the contributors to your discussions online advised that the fairest way to allocate leave was on a ‘first-come, first-served’ basis (Personnel Today, 4 April). I would agree, but with some caveats.


We had this very situation in our team some years ago (where everyone had children and wanted to take the school holidays). We brought in the first-come, first-served principle. One of the team then slammed in her holidays for the whole year, and nobody else got a look in.


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The fairest way is to allow this, but insist that only, say, a maximum of three weeks can be booked at a time, and/or that they cannot be booked more than three months in advance.


Marie James
Management recruitment team leader, Royal Mail People and Organisation Development Services

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

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Personnel Today
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