Member Article

Why managing holidays and rotas needs a tech revolution

Budget airline Ryanair has come under fire after it admitted it has ‘messed up’ their pilots holidays and would have to cancel 18,000 flights until the end of March 2018 to cover flight rotas. Due to these cancellations, Ryanair now face a massive €20m compensation bill.

Ryanair may be on the extreme scale in terms of a holiday management mess up, and many businesses may never face such a combination of events that have led to this outcome. However, the lessons are clear. Getting staff holidays wrong can negatively affect a business both financially and from a staff morale perspective. So how can businesses manage them effectively?

Alastair Brown, Chief Technical Officer of people management software company BrightHR, said:

“The first step to avoiding issues like Ryanair is to monitor and recorded leave accurately.” “For most small companies a paper-based file or a holiday spreadsheet on Excel seems to fit the bill. However, these old-fashioned tools can be problematic. Paper can go missing or be shredded. A formula can seem correct at first but quickly provide incorrect information and there’s always the annoyance of ‘read-only’ when someone else is in the document when you want to make a change.”

“For any modern business to run smoothly and accurately the best solution is a software one. A people management software can be cost effective and holidays can be recorded automatically with employers having one clear view of how much holiday entitlement employees have at any one time.”

“Software can also automatically flag potential holiday clashes, and annual leave balances can updated in real time”

“With the fast paced and ever evolving world of business going through huge technological changes, it is important that businesses from Ryanair to start-ups employ and effectively apply the power of technology in the workplace as it will ultimately make their businesses more efficient with no risk of misplaced information or noncompliance. So get your business ready for the tech revolution by getting rid of the outdated holiday request forms and adopting modern software based one,

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Alastair Brown .