A: As a business owner it may be difficult to balance holiday request(s) with the needs of a pharmacy.
It would be a good idea to review the following calendar year in advance and judge your staffing needs at key dates for instance the school holidays. Also ask yourself, will your pharmacy be affected by key and unique events such as the Queens Jubilee and or the Olympics. Decide at this time your anticipated staffing needs and share this information with staff. Also, so as not to compromise your service, take into consideration what mix of staff need to be present at any one time.
It may also be useful to monitor holiday requests to ensure that there is no appearance of preferential treatment.
Once this planning is done, confirming a holiday request is usually done on a first request approach. The use of a holiday planner visible to all staff may be useful.
If it is not possible to accept a request for a holiday, speak with the employee concerned to explain the reason why and ask them if there are alternative date they would like to take.
