Are your employees taking their annual leave entitlement?

Boost retention by encouraging your employees to use their annual leave entitlement

Our Head of Healthcare, Amy Hayer, wrote an article recently on how employee benefits can help you win the ‘talent war’. Amy offered some great advice on hard versus soft benefits and how they can help businesses at different stages. Here at Hanson Search, we often consult with clients on the best employee benefits package to offer candidates. The most competitive packages vary significantly based on the individual, the industry, and the region. But, generally speaking, holiday benefits are a key component of any package. And, particularly with senior-level candidates, these can make or break an offer.

Study finds many Brits don’t take their annual leave entitlement

Therefore, I was quite surprised to read a survey from money-saving site Voucher Box that found 43% of us Brits don’t take our full holiday allowance. The top reasons cited for this were that people either felt that their workplaces were too busy and thus they couldn’t request time off (almost 50%) or their requests were simply denied by managers (10%). More than a third of Brits surveyed were unable to carry over the unused holiday entitlement to the next year or sell it back to our employers, resulting in an average of £674.60 lost per year! When I interview people, burnout is one of the main reasons that they tell me they’re looking to move. This is so preventable.

Encourage and incentivise time off to boost your employee retention

If retention is important to your business, you should encourage your employees to take time off. Even if it’s just for a long weekend, it’s enough to give them the necessary break that they need every once in a while. I like to offer small incentives, like paid lunches, tickets to the theatre and fun leisure activities, which don’t cost much, but help make sure that my employees have a great time off and return to work refreshed and feeling loved! Building a great benefits package to attract talent to your business is important, but making sure that employees are able to actually use them is crucial if you want to hold on to that talent you worked so hard to hire.

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