Leave Request Process

Process Overview

All requests are managed in the Leave Requests Asana project.

Who starts the process?

The person requesting leave.

When should the request be sent?

As soon as this person knows s/he wants to take leave. Depending on the duration of your leave you are expected to send the request a in advance. This is important to make the team has enough to get organized.

Duration	Notice Period
<= 2 days	1 week before the first day of leave
3 < days <= 5	2 weeks before the first day of leave
1 < week <= 2 weeks	1 month before the first day of leave
> 2 weeks	2 months before the first day of leave

When is a request approved definitively?

When it is reflected in the Capacity Planner.

Detailed Process

0. Talk To Your Project Managers (Asana)

Before submitting a Leave Request, we recommend you first talk to the Project Managers of the projects you are working in order to:

1. Inform them
2. Confirm that it will be possible from the perspective of projects.

PM validation is not an absolute requirement depending on the reason why you need leave.

1. Leave Request Submission (Asana)

Create a task in the Leave Requests Asana project in the Manager to Approve column. All fields are mandatory.

1. Title: The name of the requester
2. Start Date: First day the request will be on leave
3. End Date: Last day the request will be on leave
4. # Working Days: The number of working days included in the period of leave
5. Assignee: The requester's manager
6. Description (optional): Any additional context related to the request. Remember that the content of this task is public.

2. Manager Approval (Asana)

The manager approves the request based on the following criteria:

• PMs are aware of the request
• PMs have a plan to in place to manage project deliverable during the leave period
• The leave request does not create issues with internal projects

The manager decision can be one of the following:

Decision	Action In Asana
Approve the request	Move the request to the Capacity Planner To Update column and assign the task to the Capacity Manager.
Ask for more information	Write a comment mentioning the requester and asking for additional information. Sensitive conversations should happen in direct Slack messages or during 1:1 meetings.
Deny the request	Add “Not approved” in the comment section. The request should be moved to the Processed column.

3. Capacity Planner Update (Asana)

The Capacity Manager attempts to update the Capacity Planner accordingly. The following scenarios are possible:

Scenario	Action in Asana
No issues updating the Capacity Planner	The Capacity Manager: Moves the request to the Internal Tools To Update column Leaves a comment mentioning the requester indicating that the request has been taken into account. Assigns the task to the requester ⚠️ At this stage only is the request considered as accepted.
A conflict appears in the Capacity Planner	The Capacity Manager leaves a comment mentioning the Manager. Discussions happen in Asana or on Slack.

4. Update Internal Tools

As the requester you are expected to update the internal tools to make sure other colleagues are aware / can find out that you have leave planned. 

1. Announce your leave period in #team-tech-leaves.
2. Update the company Holiday calendar
3. Update your personal calendar. Make sure to use an Out Of Office block so that meetings are rejected automatically. This inform meeting organizers immediately.
4. Log your leave in Clockwise (employees only, not applicable to contractors).

Details for steps 2 and 4 are available here.