Even though August has traditionally been considered the UK’s key month for taking summer holidays, deserted workplaces will be more common in September this year, according to research.
A survey conducted among 153 employees by the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professional revealed that just under a quarter would be taking their vacation next month compared to only 17% in August and 13.6% respectively in June and July.
As a result, Lindsay Melvin, the CIPP’s chief executive, warned that HR could expect to be inundated with holiday requests as well as questions from workers about how much leave they had and whether they could take holiday at the same time as colleagues.
“Therefore, we encourage HR and payroll departments to ensure that they put contingency plans in place to deal with a high volume of their workforce being on leave over the next few weeks,” he added.
The poll also indicated that just under half of respondents were planning a beach holiday and one in five an activity-based jaunt. Just over a third intended to have a ‘staycation’ in the UK, but 11% intended to travel to the US, 7.4% to Spain and 6.7% to France.
A worrying 16% said that they had no holiday planned for 2012 at all, however.
