How annual leave decided fairly?

mom2michael, MSN, RN, NP · Feb 10, 2008

Ours is based on whoever turns in the request 1st. If Nurse A turns hers in today for vacation in June and Nurse B turns hers in in March for vacation in June, Nurse A wins even if she has only been employed 12 weeks and Nurse B has been employed for 12 years.

Vacation requests can be submitted Jan 1st for the year in question and not a day before.

Probably not the fairest way but it's been this way every place I've ever worked and pretty much everyone is OK with it.

Of course if you had 16 nurses turn in their request on Jan 1st - then you are back to square one I suppose.

Perhaps a schedule similiar to holidays might work? If you work X vacation this year, next year you get X vacation off.

I could see that using senority in this situation would be difficult for all involved.

Ruby Vee, BSN · Feb 10, 2008

i am looking for feedback and suggestions as to how to decide annual leave fairly in the unit that i work in. we have 46 nurses on our unit. five people can take prime time annual leave at one time. prime time is from may 1st to oct 31st. the problem is that everyone would like to take their leave between the last week of june and the first week of september. that leaves 16 people having to take late fall or early spring. we are looking for the fairest way to rotate the roster so that everyone gets a fair turn . many people are upset and think that senior nurses should have first pick every year.this puts a big rift between our senior and junior nurses and is draining morale. we are losing staff because of this. please tell me how you handle this in your own unit, what works and what hasn't worked.
thank you:uhoh3:

it actually isn't assigned very fairly where i work now. what worked in the past was this: it was announced weeks in advance that the vacation request book is put out on a specific date -- say march 1 at 0700. first come, first served for vacation requests. so if i absolutely have to have off may 1-15 (for my wedding, say) i'm up and waiting in line at 0500 to be the first to post my vacation request. if i can't be there for some reason (i'm working, maybe, and can't leave my patient to stand in line for two hours) i make a deal with another employee to stand in line and request my vacation for me.

every year, there were one or two or six people who felt strongly enough about their vacation dates to stand in line to get them. the rest drifted in some time after 0700 to sign up for their vacations -- sometime up until april 1 when the dates were granted. if sally ann had the most seniority but didn't sign up until march 31, she got what was available on march 31.

there were rules: no more than two weeks during "prime" time (june-september) and no vacation between december 20 and january 2. and if you got june 30-july 13 this year, you absolutely would not be getting it next year, so don't plan your wedding for those dates.

the system was more than fair -- anyone who cared enough to stand in line got what they wanted. but what caused the demise of the system was sally ann wanting to take 6 weeks every june 1- july 13 and a new manager letting her. sally ann also didn't want to have to get up early and stand in line to get her first choice of vacation times, and since she was so piggy about what she wanted and when she wanted it, no one else would stand in line for her, either.

now everyone puts in their requests and they're decided by seniority. if you're low senior, you may not even get a vacation!

aileenve, ASN, RN · Feb 10, 2008

If someone had a week off / holiday last year they cannot have it off this year(whether they have seniority or not). However, some times if you are a favorite of the manager, she/he may allow you regardless of seniority to have annual leave or holidays off. We are supposed to request them by seniority and then see if they are approved, but..some people can do what they want to.:icon_roll

The Bell Jar · Feb 10, 2008

Yep that is how its divided at my job.Whoevers been there the longest gets first pick of when to take annual leave and so on down the line. I dont like it, but I cant do anything about it.

CHATSDALE · Feb 10, 2008

usually first request is granted but you have no way of knowing when the vacation was requested, hopefully management will truthful about it

i think seniority would come into play if you had two identical requests on the same day

i once worked in a place that the head nurse refused a nurses request for 5 wks of leave, telling her that if they could do w/o her for five weeks they really didn't need her at all and that she would have to take her leave in one or two week increments

a couple of months lather the head nurse took a 6 week vacation in europe

noc4senuf · Feb 10, 2008

How I have my scheduler do it is...

March 15-April 15, all nurses and CNA's can sign up for their vacations. After all requests are in, the final decisions are based on seniority and by April 30th. I allow one nurse and one CNA per shift/day. After the initial time frame, vacation requests are on a first come basis.

ktwlpn, LPN · Feb 11, 2008

I worked in a facility once that passed a calendar around to staff according to seniority.Everyone picked their first week of vacation.Then the calendar made the rounds again and everyone picked their second week,etc.If anyone wanted more then one week in prime time they had to trade.This worked well for all.

I'm now at a "first come,first serve" facility.It's really a shame for the newer staff-it's very difficult to get time off when school is out and the same staff tend to try to take the same times of the year off every year.We get so much time off (vacation,personal and holiday) that it's really tough to make everyone happy.Not a job I would want...

Quickbeam, BSN, RN · Feb 11, 2008

OK, this doesn't affect me any more now that I'm in community health. I take off when I want, to which my non-nurse colleagues say "big deal!". They have no idea!

However, I saw every unfair system in the world in my clinical days. The WORST was one where everything was done by absolute seniority. This hospital had a lot of .1 and .2 FTEs who kept their tiny slices of job for prestige purposes. For vacations, holidays and days off, we had to wait until every one of them came in to work, which could be almost a month for some of them. Once they all got to pick, then the choice went to the rest of us. Full timers had to wait on part-timers based on seniority. It really was awful.

Also, any time there are rules for some and different rules for others, it's just a morale killer.

ShayRN · Feb 11, 2008

Everyone is allowed to pick one week during May-Aug months. Then once everyone has one week of summer vacation, it goes by who has been in the system the longest. Seems to work out fair.