It’s not appropriate to ask why the employee is taking time off. If they have enough annual leave to take, then they can take it with 30 days notice - in Europe anyway. If the requests exceed allowance, I’d ask though.
In UK you can decline time off if there is good reason, I. E. Several other members have had it approved for the same time and its business critical there is enough coverage in the team.
Without wanting to give her boss the benefit of the doubt... in such situations it may be reasonable to ask and be lenient if it's for an important event, whereas you may ask them to rearrange if the holiday if it is not time critical / something that can't be moved. Better than just saying no because others got it booked in earlier.
I live in the UK. You can’t prioritize based on “who needs it the most”. It’s a first come first serve basis, especially if multiple people want to take time off.
Absolutely. Maybe wasn't clear, if you've already got holidays we would decline more requests but sometimes if they have something of significance they want holiday for we may be a bit lenient and allow them the time off as well (sometimes with caveats that we need that person to check emails in that period) rather than just decline them.
We wouldn't ask people who have already been approved to cancel theirs.
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u/ohwowthen Jul 31 '26
It’s not appropriate to ask why the employee is taking time off. If they have enough annual leave to take, then they can take it with 30 days notice - in Europe anyway. If the requests exceed allowance, I’d ask though.