It’s the bane of every manager’s life; the person who thinks they are so clever that they start the new year with a pre-planned leave roster. It’s normally the first thing they hand in when they get back from work. South Africa already has 12 public holidays and most of us with conventional jobs get another 20 days of paid leave.
But if you’re cute and you plan strategically, you can work both to end up with 48 days off, according to one website that helpfully published the recipe last week. Two of the 12 public holidays this year fall on a Saturday, but thanks to the research done byBusinessTech, you can create more long weekends than in previous years. There’s no doubt it’s clever, but it comes at a price.
If you are in an environment where not everyone can take leave outside of school holidays or you are in a team, where some of you are required at work all the time, it’s extremely selfish to hog all the long weekends. Essential services have managed this for years with the simple ruse of dividing the team in two; one group gets Christmas and the other new year – but not both – with the same Solomonic solution for Easter and Freedom Day/Workers’ Day. Some companies close for three weeks at the end of the year and manage their leave burdens that way, with everyone getting the public holidays that remain.
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But not everyone gets it. Unfortunately, education departments don’t always plan properly, resulting in a spate of school holidays on one or other side of the Easter/Freedom Day congestion, rather than aligning and absorbing.
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