How to encourage employees to take annual leave

Sick of your employees hoarding up all their annual leave and going on paid holidays for weeks, months, or even years at a time? Read this.

Employers all over Australia are racking up significant risk to their balance sheets (a statement of financial position) as their employees rack up annual leave.

Stats from Roy Morgan Research show that Aussies have nearly 134 million days of annual leave under their belt. Among the 8.5 million-strong paid Aussie workforce, over one third hold atleast four weeks annual leave.

The ridiculously high percentage of workers holding that amount poses an especially high financial risk to employers, particularly in the SME sector.

So how can employers keep themselves risk free? By taking more proactive measures against annual leave hoarding.

General Manager of Corporate Traveller, Jess Anscombe, said the key to counteracting hoarding was increasing workplace engagement for taking leave and promoting the health and wellbeing benefits.

“Many of our customers have worked with us to parlay the business travel partnership into a parallel leisure solution that helps minimise leave balances,” she said.

“Utilising the existing relationship helps keep the issue top of mind around the office and reduces the barrier for employees to make bookings by increasing the convenience factor.”

And after news recently broke of a Northern Territory public servant accumulating over two years of annual leave – a liability of almost $400,000 – companies should be more aware of the financial risk of unchecked hoarding than ever before.

Anscombe said Corporate Travellers approach in minimising annual leave hoarding had fast become a more popular option for businesses with Corporate Traveller’s integrated leisure travel service, Travel Club, experiencing increases of 44 per cent in enquiry and 27 per cent in sales in the last financial year.

Many employers are also using incentive and rewards tactics to boost employee motivation to take leave.

“Professional travel managers can be used as a resource for annual leave enticements like travel vouchers, gift cards or holiday discounts,” Anscombe said.

“They can also assist in setting up a regular flow of alerts to employees for special industry deals or exclusive workplace promotions around Christmas, Easter and school holidays.”

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

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