Donating leave days: offering colleagues a helping hand
Minister of Social Affairs and Employment, Lodewijk Asscher, has announced that the government is going to do a trial run of a new concept: sharing leave days. For those who have been interested in giving away leave days will now get the chance to experiment with this idea. Of course, this will only apply to leave exceeding the statutory minimum. Statutory leave days have to be taken by the employees themselves. Those types of leave days are not included in this trial run.
Everyone contributes
The idea behind the experiment is that employees can voluntarily donate leave days to colleagues who are in dire need of extra leave; for example when they are burdened with the responsibility of caring for disabled or elderly family member (mantelzorg). The extra leave that is awarded in these cases is often not enough to go the distance. To prevent all the employee’s personal leave to be used up in necessary care, everyone in the office could contribute a leave day. This way, the employee in question would be able to provide care for their relative, and perhaps also to enjoy a well-deserved break for once.
Socially responsible management
Being able to help others without it costing any money: it is a beautiful example of socially responsible management which could enrich every company. Moreover, the donation of leave days can have a positive effect on the work environment; helping out a colleague in a tight spot strengthens work relationships. When this idea is put into practice within a department, you can be sure that will improve team bonding.
What does this mean for HR?
For the HR-manager, this new system will naturally lead to a slightly heavier work load. The donated leave day should, after all, be deducted from one employee’s balance, and added to the balance of another. When using cloud-based leave registration system, this process becomes much simpler. It makes it easy and clear for employees to request a donation of leave to someone else.
Dutch Minister Asscher hopes to see many employers taking part in the experiment, offering their employees the opportunity to donate their leave days to employees who need them. Leavedays.com has already provided the possibility to donate leave days for a number of Belgian companies. After all, this system has already been implemented in Belgium. There are possibilities for adjustments, so that Dutch customers would be able to use this option as well.
Would you like to know more about the cloud-based leave registration system of Leavedays.com? Feel free to contact us!
