Holidays & Leave

Holiday regulations & How to request holiday

Per country we have different regulations about holiday and the amount as well as taking holiday. Per country this is arranged differently and the HR Business Partner and manager will approach this according to the countries regulations.

For the USA you have 20 days being on a full time employment (40 hours a week): 

Stimulate employees to take holiday

Saving up holidays is not desirable, not only from a financial point of view for an employer, but also because the employer is responsible to help employees to relax and to distance themselves from their work in order to avoid overloading and stress. 

Responsibility of the employer and the employee

Ensuring that the employees can take sufficient leave is the responsibility of the employer. The employer will also have to protect the employees from themselves. We also call it part of “prevention measures to prevent absenteeism in the long term”.

On one hand, you may assume that the employee is responsible for taking their own leave. On the other hand, it is important that the employer or manager keep “feeling” with the workplace. As a manager and employer we need to ensure that the team are looked after, and make sure we recognize early signs of possible overload and high work pressure among them. In this case we need to start with conversations and give direction in order to monitor leave requests and motivate people to take holidays appropriately. 

When it is noticeable that an employee is over worked or over stressed, it is highly desirable to take leave and slow down. Naturally, work must be completed on time and work must be prevented from being delayed, but the choice between taking days off or the risk of sick employees being absent is clear. Our priority is to ensure our team is happy and healthy.

Employees who don't take enough leave every year will have a meeting with their manager and HR to create a plan on how they will take their take leave. This plan could perhaps be monthly in order to avoid someone being forced to take a large amount of leave suddenly. Otherwise we could end up in a situation in which the hours given by law will expire and taken off your balance, without any excuses, because this is arranged by law.

Requesting holidays in Hibob

We request leave in HiBob - When you log in, you'll see the 'time off' button on the top left of your home page. 

Requesting special leave in Hibob

As special leave requires an extra check and actions from HR, the process of requesting anything other than holiday, needs to be done via following process: