Human Resource Blog

Vacation and Discrimination

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We have had one of our Florida employees threaten a lawsuit because she claims that we have been discriminatory with vacation days because we would not let her take her vacation at the same time as her boss. Her boss, however, notified us about her vacation nearly 6 months prior to the other employee. How can we avoid a law suit?

Unless you had a clearly stated vacation policy for the company, you may have to settle with the employee on this one. Many companies state in the vacation policy that employees must tell the employer X months in advance prior to a vacation and that they must have the vacation dates cleared. If your employee has given you a specific amount of notice that is required, but has had her vacation days rejected, then it is understandable that she is upset about discrimination. For this reason, you may also want to write into your company policy that if a boss is on vacation, the team immediately under her needs to be in the office.

You can create a vacation policy around your specific company needs. As such, you can write just about anything you want into the vacation policy. If an employee does not want to comply with the vacation policy, then the company does not have to hire the employee. However, the employees must all be treated fairly and uniformly across the company.

Here are some other strategies that may help you develop some vacation ground rules for your company:

Don’t let employees take more than a set number of vacation days. For example, if you offer your employees two weeks per year, then make sure that they can only take on week at a time.

Make sure that employees in senior positions or that have been with your company for longer have seniority with their vacation plans. You can also arrange that employees that have had better attendance have more vacation time.

Make employees schedule their vacation days well in advance, especially if they are planning on taking an extra day off for a holiday, that way, you can avoid having a large number of employees take off at once around busy and popular vacation times.

Prohibit vacation days during the busiest holidays, such as the winter holidays or summer holidays.