Employees not taking vacations doesn’t necessarily imply that they love their work or where they work. Studies show that employees who take vacations are less likely to feel burned out and are more productive than employees who don’t. Also, employees who don’t vacation are more likely to develop health issues, especially heart disease and stroke. 

So, vacations are a necessary time off you should encourage among employees for their health and even your organization’s productivity. However, you also need to manage vacation requests to ensure employees don’t take their vacation leave so simultaneously that the entire workload of a department to just one person or no one at all.

Having a vacation request document ensures employees can easily request leave days and the organization management can easily approve it. It also provides you with the information you need to grant the requests to ensure absences are well-managed and don’t stop processes within the organization.

What Is a Vacation Request Form?

A vacation request form enables employees to request time off from work. It typically outlines the specific dates of the desired leave, the reason for the absence, and other information that helps those who approve the vacation requests (HR and supervisors) know how to manage the absence.

Using a vacation request form also ensures employees don’t just up and leave their responsibilities, they make a plan to properly hand off their tasks to a specific person or people on their time off. This ensures that your organization still remains high-performing even when some of your employees are on vacation.

Purpose and Benefits

Let’s look at the major ways a vacation request form helps you and your employees plan vacations more effectively:

• For Employees:

• Clarifies Leave Days: using the vacation request allows employees state the duration of their intended time-off. This ensures you the employer can plan for their absence. For example, you could get a temporary absence if it’s a long break, while if it is short, you can communicate with the employee’s teammates to take over some of their urgent tasks while rewarding them for the overtime.
• Assurance of Approval: Vacation requests take time and supervisors have to go through the timeline to properly plan for it. So, using a vacation request increases employees’ chances of getting approved because you can easily record the request and approve it, unlike when it’s over a discussion that could easily be forgotten. Also, if the HR or supervisor gets changed and the vacation request isn’t documented, the chances of the vacation request being rejected are very high.
• Planning and Coordination: Using vacation request forms also ensures employees don’t leave their responsibilities hanging when they are on their time off. It helps you collect information about how employees plan to handoff their tasks, helping them plan their time off effectively e.g. getting a temporary replacement, or coordinating with colleagues to distribute their tasks.

• For Employers:

• • Better Workforce Management: Using a vacation request form helps you plan for an employee’s absence. For example, if the inventory manager is going on vacation, you plan for this absence by getting a temporary stand-in from their department to ensure your company doesn’t run out of stock or overstock and end up misappropriating funds while they are away.
  • Improved Planning: If you run a fast-paced company, work has to go on while an employee is away. So using the vacation request form ensures you plan for this absence by distributing their tasks to someone else while away. If it’s tasks that can be delayed, you can schedule the task deadline to a later time.
  • Accurate Record-Keeping: Using a vacation request form also helps you create a centralized repository for time-off requests. So, if you need to confirm information about an employee’s absence, you can easily check and take appropriate action.

What You Need to Create a Vacation Request Form

Let’s look at the most important components you need for your vacation request form:

• Essential Components:
  • Employee Information: Name, department, employee ID, contact details.
  • Dates of Requested Leave: Start date, end date, number of days.
  • Reason for Leave: Optional, but can provide context.
  • Approver’s Information and Signature: Details of the approving authority.
  • Submission Date: Automatic timestamp for record-keeping.
• Optional
  • Delegation of Duties: To ensure smooth workflow during the employee’s absence.
  • Leave Calendar: To track vacation usage and prevent conflicts.
  • Comments or Additional Notes: For any specific requests or explanations.

Best Practices for Managing Vacation Requests

Effective vacation request management is crucial for both employees and employers. Here are some best practices to consider:

• Clear Vacation Policy: Set up clear rules for taking time off: who can request vacations, how to ask, and how to get it approved. For example, employees who need to be in your organization for at least 6 months before taking a vacation, have to fill out the vacation request form and their supervisor must approve it before they are cleared for the time off.
• Timely Response: Quickly check and approve or reject vacation requests to prevent last-minute changes. This helps you prevent conflict, dissatisfaction, or even resentment with management amongst employees.
• Communication and Coordination: There should be open communication between employees, managers, and HR to avoid conflicts and ensure adequate coverage.
• Vacation Request Tracking: Use a system to keep track of vacation requests, how much time is left, and when people can’t take time off.
• Employee Self-Service: Provide employees with access to their vacation days and request history.
• Regular Reviews: Check vacation policies and practices often to ensure vacation request forms reflect the company’s needs and make employees happy.

Free Vacation Request Form Template

• Open the vacation request template
• Edit the Form: Tailor the template to match your vacation leave requirements. For example can modify the form’s questions to be more specific to your company and absence management needs.
• Customize the Form: Edit the form design to match your organization’s branding. You can change the color and theme to match your company’s color palette and add your company logo.
• Implement Workflow: Set up approval workflows to route requests to appropriate managers or HR representatives. Also, enable notifications so people in charge of leave requests see requests when employees submit them.
• Integrate with Your System: If you work with a large company with multiple leave requests and timelines for projects. Use the Zapier integration tool to connect the form to your HR software for seamless data transfer and notifications.
• Share the Form: Add the form to your communication channel so employees can easily access them. For example, you can copy, paste, and pin the link in the employee’s Slack channel. You could also create a document or spreadsheet where employees can easily access them e.g. Airtable, Google Sheets, Notion, Google Docs, etc.

Conclusion

Vacation request forms help you create a smooth flow for employees to make their leave requests while helping you effectively manage their absence. It also encourages transparency in managing vacation requests and prevents misunderstanding with employees when requests are rejected for legitimate reasons.

We hope this guide has made planning and approving employee vacation requests easier. Also, here’s a free vacation request template to get you started.