Encouraging Staff To Take Annual Leave – Email Template

Annual leave reminder email sample

As a HR manager or employer, you might find yourself in the situation where you need to send a friendly reminder to one (or all) of your direct reports to give them a nudge to book their annual leave.

That’s why we’ve put together a couple of email templates to provide some real-life examples. We recommend using these templates as a starting point. Although you can copy and paste this text, it’s best to tailor the content to your recipient and your specific situation. Remember to include any relevant details to your workplace.

In this template you will find: 

• Email template for individual team members
• Email template for a team

Why encouraging annual leave matters

Time away from work is something we all need, whether that’s a random Wednesday off or a week soaking up the sun on a beach. But do your employees feel confident when it comes to booking their leave? The pressures of work can make people feel hesitant to book time off, from fears around falling behind on tasks to making life harder for colleagues. 

Managers and leaders need to ensure their teams are using their annual leave, taking time away from work to rest and maintain a healthy work-life balance. This annual leave reminder email sample makes it easier to encourage staff to book their holidays and take a well-deserved break.  

Benefits for employees

Sending an annual leave reminder email to employees helps to foster a positive culture around holidays, encouraging them to use their allocated days and not hoard or waste them. Taking an extended holiday or just the odd day off brings so many important benefits. From managing stress levels to better mental health and job satisfaction, time off is essential for every employee. 

Benefits for employers

Happy and healthy employees are an obvious benefit for any company, but the importance of annual leave has deeper impacts on a business. Stressed and burnt-out employees can lead to everything from reduced quality of work and missed deadlines to more sick leave or even quitting altogether. All of this affects a business’s bottom line and can lead to lingering consequences for company culture, team dynamics and brand reputation. Ensuring your employees have a great experience is essential to your bottom line. 

Common reasons employees delay taking leave

There are a number of reasons why employees may be hesitant to take leave from workload concerns to perceived company culture and even lack of awareness of the process or how to apply (particularly if they’re new). Here are some common reasons why they may delay taking leave and how you as an employer can address them. 

Workload concerns

Taking a break can feel like a pointless exercise if you expect to come back to a mountain of work and fresh problems to deal with. Employees will simply avoid using their annual leave if they feel this way. 

How you can address this as an employer: Take the time to express to the team that they deserve time off to rest and recuperate and share key research with them about how rest can improve productivity. Our recent Work That Works report found that employee satisfaction has a huge impact on their productivity. If there are major concerns about taking time off and coming back to a pile of work, you might even suggest a coverage roster to ensure there will be someone to cover the work and keep things moving at any given time. 

Company culture

Newer employees will naturally take their cue from the established culture when they join, including the approach to annual leave. If not taking holidays is rewarded or seen as a sign of commitment, new employees will be much more hesitant to take leave themselves. 

How you can address this as an employer: Ensure that management or leadership are seen to be taking annual leave and setting a good example. Your employees will be watching to see if people on leave are contacted about work or whether they’re left to relax on their break. The best thing you can do is set a good example. 

Encourage people to share and celebrate their holiday plans, whether they’re heading off to the Amalfi coast or settling in on the couch to watch Netflix for a week – a holiday is a holiday. 

Lack of awareness

If the process of booking leave isn’t clear or easily accessible, this can discourage employees from using their holiday allowance. Staff should be able to easily see the number of days they’re entitled to and how many they have left to use. 

How you can address this as an employer: Run short training sessions or send video recordings around to remind everyone how to check what leave they have available and how to apply for leave. Encourage everyone to get their leave applications in early to ensure you can manage any clashes or if you need to arrange skeleton-staff coverage for the period. 

Crafting effective annual leave reminder emails

If you’re wondering how best to encourage your staff to take annual leave, an email reminder is a great place to start. Download our annual leave reminder email sample and keep these factors in mind when adapting it to your team: 

Tone and timing

Keep the tone light and informative rather than reprimanding. This is also why it’s best to send reminders throughout the year rather than towards the end when annual leave might be piling up. Creating a sense of urgency will just add stress. 

Key elements to include

Remind colleagues how they can access their annual leave balance, how to put in requests and the importance of taking leave to relax and not think about work. Provide support with handovers and managing workloads to reduce the anxiety of taking leave. 

Personalisation tips

Our free template provides a quick start to sending a reminder email, but it’s worthwhile personalising the messaging for specific teams and colleagues. We’ve included email templates designed for individuals as well as groups of employees. The more personalised you can make it to your workplace and your writing style, the more likely your team will be to respond to it. 

Encouraging a culture of taking leave

Crafting the perfect annual leave reminder email is one thing, but it’s also crucial to foster a positive culture and respect for taking time off. It’s up to managers and leaders to set the tone and expectation through example and clear communication.  

Leadership leading by example

Make sure managers and team leaders are living by the same principles, taking time off when they need it throughout the year and showing how to do successful handovers and support their colleagues.  

Regular communication

Talk about annual leave in your regular one-to-ones, checking in with employees on their workload and ensuring they’re not putting off taking a break or worried about booking leave.  

Recognising and rewarding time off

You could make a game of using annual leave effectively – give a shout-out to anyone who’s getting through their annual leave allotment at a good pace, encouraging others to do the same.

Download your free email template

Download your free annual leave reminder email template now and start encouraging your staff to take time off, helping them and your business.