We're building a high-performance organisation that delivers great software products. We recognise that this requires a lot of hard work and that for our team to perform at their highest possible level, they need to live a well-balanced life and take regular time-out for rest, relaxation and rejuvenation.
All team members have 38 days of leave available between June and May, this is inclusive of public and bank holidays (pro-rata for part time colleagues.) We believe this policy will help us to perform at the highest possible level.
It is important that you and your colleagues feel that holiday is highly available. That holiday is an easily accessible commodity that enables everyone to get the necessary rest that they need.
Made Tech will support holiday requests that are up to 4 consecutive weeks, if you wish to take longer than this the additional time may be unpaid. Please see our Flexible Working as the alternative to Flexible Holiday in those situations.
We trust you'll use your best judgement when taking holidays. This is the level of notice we expect when you take your holiday:
- For 1 day – you must give at least 3 days notice
- For 2 days – you must give at least 1 week notice
- For between 3 days - 4 days – you must give at least 2 weeks notice
- For between 1 week - 2 weeks – you must give at least 4 weeks notice
- For greater than 2 weeks – you must give 3 months notice
The notice guidance is a minimum - please aim to give your team as much notice of upcoming leave as you can. Your team, Delivery Manager and client should all agree to your leave before you schedule this in, and providing notice minimises the chance of problems being raised. Where your team plans work at a regular cadence (e.g. during sprint planning every two weeks), you should aim to make the team aware of any potential leave to help the team remain accountable for commitments made.
The ability to book holiday/learning days at shorter notice whilst you are within the chalet is an accepted exception to the above notice periods - in those instances please check in with Scheduling to ensure you are not due to be imminently assigned to an account and let your line manager know.
If you wish to book holiday outside of these guidelines, please make a request to your Head of Capability, Head of Industry, or Head of Business Service who will help you plan for this time off.
Having several team members away at the same time can make life really difficult for everyone else. Try to forward-plan your holiday, so it doesn't have a detrimental affect on your team members or on the company.
We recommend you check with your Delivery Lead whenever you join a new team. Our general guideline on this is that only 1 person from a small team (less than 4) may be away at any one time. For larger teams (5+) please refer to your Delivery or Team Lead to confirm what works best for your team.
We want to ensure teams own their holidays and that includes thinking about the commercial impact of taking them. To that affect we need to make sure you've done the following before booking holiday:
- Ask your team members if it's okay with them
- Ask your clients if it's okay with them
- Ensure your responsibilities are covered whilst you're away
- Ensure the Made Tech person leading your client workstream or your line manager provides their agreement
- Ensure that the holiday is placed into HiBob
It is the responsibility of the person agreeing to a holiday booking to ensure it is made in aligment to this policy and that the holiday will not impact the quality of service we're able to provide our clients
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We use the HiBob calendar when working out project allocation and the number of days being billed to clients, so it's important that it is always up-to-date and accurate.
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Time off due to illness and/or injury are handled separately. Flexible holiday cannot be used for these types of absences.
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If a team members performance declines significantly due to abuse of this policy, then we reserve the right to review their use of this policy.
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If you leave Made Tech part way through the year your contractual holiday allowance will be pro-rated to account for your leave date. In some cases this might mean we'll pay you for accrued and unused holiday and in others it might mean you'll have to pay days taken over your pro-rated allowance back.
- We only work for clients during the 3 days between Christmas and New Years if they specifically ask for this. Where there is a client requirement we'd look for volunteers to provide this cover. Most team members will not be working during this time.
- Please note - you will need to book this time off as holiday in HiBob unless it has been agreed that you are working.
Taking time off works differently for the two weeks before Christmas and the first week in January as this is a popular time for holidays. This means we need to coordinate with our team beyond what we may do ordinarily to ensure that there is fair access to holiday and adequate cover of team members working across client deliveries.
- We'll consult with our clients as early as possible to understand what level of cover they will need.
- Time off requests submitted for this period are typically reviewed and confirmed by mid October.