How to Manage Leave Requests for Remote Teams

Managing leave requests for a team in the same building with the same public holiday calendar is straightforward. Managing leave for a distributed team spanning continents, cultures, and calendar systems is an exercise in complexity management that most HR systems aren't built to handle.

When your London employee requests Boxing Day off, your San Francisco employee expects Thanksgiving, and your Singapore employee observes Vesak Day, you need a system that handles multiple holiday calendars without creating fairness issues or coverage gaps.

The Multi-Calendar Challenge

A truly global team might observe dozens of different public holidays. UK employees get 8 bank holidays, German employees get 9-13 depending on their state, US employees get 11 federal holidays, and employees in some Asian countries observe 15+ public holidays.

The naive approach -giving everyone the same holiday list -creates obvious unfairness. The sophisticated approach -tracking different entitlements by location -creates administrative complexity.

Most successful distributed teams pick one of two approaches:

Floating holiday model: Define a minimal core set of company-wide holidays (maybe 5-7 days) plus a generous floating holiday allocation (10-15 days) that employees can use for local public holidays, religious observances, or personal preferences. This treats adults like adults and avoids micromanaging which specific days different locations observe.

Location-based calendars: Maintain separate holiday calendars by country or region, giving each employee the public holiday schedule appropriate for their location. This requires more administrative overhead but ensures everyone gets equivalent time off. Look for leave management systems that support multiple holiday calendars per country.

Time Zone Approval Workflows

When your employee in Tokyo requests next Friday off and submits the request Thursday night their time, it's Thursday morning in London and Wednesday evening in San Francisco. Who approves it? How long should they have to wait?

Set clear SLAs for approval turnaround that account for time zones. A reasonable policy might be "all leave requests will be approved or denied within 24 business hours of submission, accounting for weekends and public holidays in the manager's location."

For urgent time-off requests (sick leave, family emergencies), establish a backup approval chain. If the primary manager is offline due to time zones or their own time off, requests automatically escalate to a designated backup after 4 hours.

Coverage Planning Across Time Zones

Traditional office teams notice when too many people request the same week off because they see the calendar. Distributed teams lose this visibility unless you deliberately create it.

We discovered this the hard way at BetterQA when three QA engineers across different time zones independently requested the same sprint week off. We only noticed when a client deliverable slipped.

Implement team availability views that show who's off when, flagging potential coverage problems before they happen. If 3 out of 4 backend developers request the same week off, the system should warn about reduced capacity and suggest someone move their dates.

Be especially careful about month-end and quarter-end periods. When different regions take summer holidays at different times (July/August in Europe, different patterns in Asia), you might have adequate coverage globally but lack coverage in specific specializations.

Cultural Differences in Leave Expectations

Different countries have radically different cultural norms around time off. European employees typically take 2-3 week blocks for summer holidays. US employees often take shorter, more frequent breaks. Japanese employees might have generous legal entitlement but cultural pressure not to use it.

Establish company-wide cultural norms that respect local practices while ensuring everyone actually uses their time off. Some companies set "minimum vacation" requirements, mandating that everyone take at least 10 consecutive days off annually to ensure proper rest.

Communicate these norms explicitly during onboarding. "In this company, we expect people to fully use their vacation entitlement, and we plan capacity assuming people will do so" is a very different message than "technically you have 20 days but most people here only take 8."

Integration with Project Planning

Leave management can't exist separately from project scheduling. When someone requests two weeks off during a critical project milestone, you need visibility into that conflict immediately, not two days before the deadline when you realize they're gone.

Integrate your leave system with project management tools. When someone submits leave that conflicts with project deadlines or sprint commitments, flag it for discussion. This doesn't mean denying the leave -it means having the conversation about coverage and timeline adjustments early.

Notification and Visibility

Everyone on the team should know who's off when, especially in async-first remote teams where you might message someone not realizing they're out. Integrate approved leave with team calendars, Slack status updates, and email autoresponders.

The notification should include return date: "Sarah is out until Tuesday, February 18. For urgent issues, contact Maria." This prevents the frustration of sending multiple messages to someone who's camping in Patagonia with no connectivity.

Handling Sick Leave Across Cultures

Sick leave policies and expectations vary dramatically by country. Some locations require medical certificates for any sick leave over 1 day, others allow self-certification for up to 7 days, and some have effectively unlimited sick leave without formal tracking.

Establish a baseline sick leave policy that meets the most stringent local requirements while being flexible enough to handle cultural differences. In practice, this often means: "We trust you to take sick leave when you're sick. For extended illness over 5 days, we need a medical note to document the absence for HR purposes, not because we don't believe you."

Conclusion

Managing leave for distributed teams requires systems that handle multiple holiday calendars, time-zone-aware approval workflows, and cultural differences in time-off expectations. The goal is ensuring everyone gets equivalent time off while maintaining coverage and project continuity.

For distributed teams seeking leave management that handles the complexity of global operations, see how BetterFlow manages multi-country leave and holidays.