I have lately been faced with this Dilema at work. I choose not to go into specifics as it’s not necessary for the point of this thread.
There is a two-week-long festival coming up which all of the staff for whom I do the rota would want time off.
I’ve thought about banning individual holiday requests and producing a rota which gives all of them an equal maximum amount of time off. I’ve thought about saying ‘first come first served’ and let them hate each other for being quickest off the mark. I’ve thought about a combination of the two.
What do you do when everyone (or most everyone) wants the same time off?
I’ve never actually done the scheduling, but I’ve been one of the people scheduled. Usually, places I’ve worked required requests to be submitted by a deadline, and they were approved based on date of submission/seniority. For one job, there was a maximum of one week per person for the 2 week Christmas/New Year’s period ( since 50% of a unit could be out at any one time), but people were still permitted to request which week they wanted
Assuming that this festival is a yearly event, what we do is that some people have the time off this year, and the others the next. That way it is fairly shared out and, at some point, everyone gets a bite of the cherry. To sort out who gets it first, normally it’s on the basis of someone volunteering not to be included (they would then get the time off next year) - this is based on the fact that the people I work with all work together as a great team and are fair about the way events like this are rostered. That probably wouldn’t be the case everywhere of course.
I find that as long as the decisions are fair and the decision making process is clear and above board, then 99% of people will go along with those decisions fairly happily.
It would be great to give everyone at least some time off so they could all enjoy whatever’s going on, but that’s not always possible.
Using the ‘first come, first served’ option is also going to make some people very unhappy and that won’t lead to a good workplace atmosphere.
I’d be tempted to try sheduling it so everyone gets a bit of time off but nobody gets the whole two weeks. After that, if people don’t get the couple of days they really wanted, you could get them to sort it out amongst themselves and let you know who’s going to be working which shifts.
I worked in a department with essential employees, IOW there had to be coverage every day of the year. The holidays were placed in a hat for staff to choose which ones they had to work. Then they could bargain amongst themselves for mutually agreeable trades.