Hi - wanting to gather best practice advice on approving vacation time for an employee then notifying them 3 weeks later, the vacation request has to be rejected due to increased activity.  I'm told the employee has already made plans and purchased tickets for travel.  Is the company obligated to honor an approved vacation request?

 Thanks. 

The best practice is to have language in an employee handbook that states either previously granted vacation will only be rescinded upon the mutual consent of the employee and supevisor, and/or that vacation can be rescinded upon the occurence of some type of emergency (e.g. shortage of staff due to the swine flu).  Absent this language in the handbook or vacation policy, the unilateral decision to rescind a previously granted vacation leave can possibly open the door to Pandora's box.  I'm sure you know that if the process, or guidelines, for rescinding previously approved leave is not clearly expressed in a written policy, you better make sure such decisons are made consistently with past and future practice.

Also, probably just as much a concern as anything else, you have the employee relations problem associated with the cost to the employee becasue the leave is now being denied.  You might consider sometype of reimbursement, but again, keep in mind, that if such a policy is not expressed, you are creating a new policy that must be consistently with past and future practices.  My only advice without knowing anymore; be careful with these types of decisions.

lslaven:

Hi - wanting to gather best practice advice on approving vacation time for an employee then notifying them 3 weeks later, the vacation request has to be rejected due to increased activity.  I'm told the employee has already made plans and purchased tickets for travel.  Is the company obligated to honor an approved vacation request?

 Thanks. 

The employee has relied on the employer's promise to let them take the time off and in relying on that promise they have spent money (probably money they can't get back since refundable air tickets are so expensive).  That doesn't seem like something that a Company would want to do to its employees but, if that's really where you want to go, you might ask your attorney about promissory estoppel before doing it.