This year, July 4 falls on Friday, which means employers likely will face a surge in PTO requests for the long holiday weekend. Or does it?
A new survey suggests that almost one-quarter of employees do not officially submit their vacation requests until the actual day they’re taking off — and sometimes not even until weeks after they’ve returned.
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Undermanaged time-off processes are often the root of understaffing or downturns in productivity during popular vacation seasons,” said Tiffany McGowen, senior executive vice president of human resources and talent acquisition at Paycom, a provider of cloud-based human capital management software.
The lack of documented time-off requests can have a ripple effect, causing pay errors, data discrepancies, and accrual mistakes, along with a more immediate impact on ensuring adequate staffing levels for business continuity, according to Paycom.
Paycom’s data is based on a segment of employees across the company’s clients who submitted time-off requests through Paycom’s Time-Off Requests tool in 2023 and 2024. Time-off requests represent paid and unpaid time-off requests of more than six hours made by full- or part-time employees of organizations operating in the United States. This excludes family leave, jury duty, sick days, and company holidays.
July 4 weekend plans
Effective time-off systems have become even more essential as businesses prepare to handle a surge of 40% more time-off requests during the summer. Time off around the Fourth of July is the most in-demand vacation request of the season, with 326% more requests on July 5 than the average day in 2024. Yet many employees still wait until after the weekend to officially log their time off, creating challenges for payroll accuracy and staffing coverage.
To prepare for a flurry of requests, Paycom recommends organizations take the following steps to help ensure smooth operations:
- Set and regularly audit time-off policies to align with current staffing thresholds.
- Implement deadlines for time-off requests on popular vacation dates. The average employee requests time off around approximately 34 days in advance for high-demand vacation days.
- Empower managers to reiterate company expectations around time-off request procedures.
- Use software that automates time-off decisions based on established time-off policies, as well as automatically updates those decisions in scheduling, payroll, and more.
“Organizations need accessible, efficient, and consistent time-off systems to prioritize business continuity and employee experience,” McGowen said.
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