How to Manage Seasonal Spikes in Time-Off Requests

As employees rush to summer getaways, they often leave their leaders to pick up the operational pieces. According to our own data, organizations can anticipate a surge of 40% more time-off requests during the summer season.^*

But employers experience issues managing them. Paycom found nearly one-quarter (25%) of employees do not officially submit their vacation requests until the day of their trip or weeks after the fact. Why? Unclear policies and inconsistent enforcement could be the cause. A separate Paycom study from 2023 found a third of employees nationwide struggle to understand their company’s time-off policies.

A lack of timely and documented time-off requests can easily trigger:

• pay errors
• data discrepancies
• accrual mistakes
• understaffing
• and more

To better understand how your organization can effectively manage them, let’s explore what causes time-off requests to escalate during the summer. Afterward, we’ll see how the right automated tech simplifies time-off decision-making.

What influences summer time-off trends?

Time-off issues begin to heat up during the summer as absent employees fuel potential understaffing and decreased productivity.

Fourth of July weekend remains one of the most popular holidays for time-off requests.

Friday, July 5, was the third-most-requested day for time off in 2024. According to Paycom, that Friday received 326% more requests than the average day in 2024. But it wasn’t just the day after the Fourth of July that saw a spike. Wednesday, July 3, was the 11th most popular day off in 2024, receiving 111% more requests than the average day that year. If that weren’t enough, Monday, July 8 of that year saw a 77% increase in time-off requests.

Labor Day is a similar magnet for time-off requests. Paycom found employers should expect an estimated 110% increase in time-off requests for the Friday of Labor Day weekend. Between 2023 and 2024, that day sees 45% more time-off requests than the Tuesday after Labor Day.

These holidays demand a simple and streamlined request process to cover outages. Though employees often struggle to submit vacation requests on time, prime summer occasions like Independence Day and Labor Day create an exception. While nearly 25% of employees don’t request days off until the day of (or sometimes after their day off), on average, employees submitted time-off requests 34 days in advance of both holidays.

What is the cost of time-off issues?

Regardless of your organization’s size or industry, time-off management can severely impact the bottom line and requires deliberate, strategic planning. Relying on antiquated systems or outdated and inefficient processes is a lose-lose for employers and their employees.

For example, when HR and managers have to follow up on missing or incomplete timecards, it costs an estimated $13.07 per instance, according to Ernst & Young. This single issue can quickly add up if employees aren’t accurately logging their time off.

And that’s just barely scratching the surface of unmanaged time-off requests.

How unmanaged time-off requests impact HR and managers

Without effectively documented time off, every absence feels unexpected. As a result, this could put HR and managers alike in a bind as they struggle to address understaffing and ensure schedule coverage. At the same time, absences could force other employees to pick up the slack, stretching a workforce thin and further cutting its overall efficiency. Plus, it could require employers to authorize overtime or temporary workers just to meet minimum targets and expectations, which could sharply increase overall labor costs.

Employee morale could take a hit, too. After all, how would you feel if you had to work excessive hours because time off wasn’t properly accounted for? You’d likely experience fatigue, confusion and, ultimately, frustration toward your employer. This unaddressed issue could also spur disputes around time off, since it creates ambiguity around how requests get approved.

Unmanaged time-off requests impact strategic planning, too. Think of it this way: If a manager can’t confirm availability with 100% accuracy, how can they confidently and optimally position their employees and resources? Knowing about potential time off in advance gives leaders the foresight to pivot, whereas unorganized time-off requests leave them managing in the dark.

How unmanaged time-off requests impact employees

While unmanaged time-off requests may be painful for HR and managers, they can be outright frustrating for employees.

With no clear trail of approvals, employees must rely on word of mouth. This makes it extremely unclear if an employee is authorized to take their time off and could compromise that time accurately reflecting in payroll.

Additionally, unclear or hard-to-find time-off policies lend themselves to a culture of confusion around:

• approvals
• denials
• the time-off process itself

When employees don’t clearly understand the rules around time off, it’s extremely unlikely those policies — if they even exist — will be followed. Without clear and accessible expectations, time-off decisions could be negatively impacted by bias and inconsistency.

How automation helps organizations overcome time-off issues

To combat time-off issues, organizations should:

• create clear and consistent policies
• establish a simplified request process
• overcommunicate rules and procedures

Employers should also gather feedback from employees to get a better gauge of their time-off needs and understanding of any pre-existing policies. It’s also essential for organizations to audit their time-off procedures, accruals and the strategy that influences them. This is vital to help ensure your strategy adheres to local, state and federal laws that affect time off. (If you’re uncertain about which laws cover the states where you operate, always consult a licensed legal professional.)

Ideally, your time-off policy shouldn’t just address your immediate needs but also long-term and seasonal demands. It should scale with and account for any cultural, financial, compliance and operational requirements your organization could face. Most importantly, you should consider automated software that simplifies your time-off process and automates the decisions that influence it.

Paycom’s Time-Off Requests featuring GONE® automates traditionally unmanaged time-off processes, approving or denying employees’ time-off requests based on criteria you set. While GONE helps ensure consistency among time-off requests, your employees benefit from:

• much-needed clarity into the time-off process
• instant decisions
• convenience to submit their requests anytime, anywhere through Paycom’s fully mobile app

Meanwhile, GONE frees managers from decision fatigue, so they no longer have to mediate disputes as employees wait for answers. Once GONE is set up, Paycom’s truly single software automates the rest.

Download our infographic to learn more about time-off trends and how the right tech simplifies managing them.

^*The data above is based on the segment of employees across Paycom’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, among others.