Holiday calendar for diagnostic labs

Closed, short-hours and normal days

Split the year's holidays into three groups. A few days, often Diwali and the morning of Holi, see some centres closed. Many more are short-hours days: collection from 7 am to 11 am, and processing only for received samples and emergencies. The rest are normal working days for the lab, even if they are holidays for other businesses. Publish this grid per city before January. In ZeniaHR, apply a holiday to the branches and departments that actually close, and handle short-hours days through the roster with a shorter shift.

Who works on Holi and Diwali

Holiday duty should rotate. Keep a list of who worked the major festivals last year and give them first choice of a day off this year. In a processing section with four technicians, one person working each festival in turn keeps the bench running without anyone working every festival. Staff on duty earn comp-off from the worked holiday, or holiday overtime where your overtime policy pays it, and the roster day grid shows exactly who was on duty for the record.

City-wise and optional holidays

A lab network across Hyderabad, Pune and Kolkata faces Bonalu, Ganesh Chaturthi and Durga Puja in different months. Create regional holidays once and tag them to the branches where they apply. Offer optional holidays with a yearly pick limit for staff who celebrate Eid, Christmas, Guru Nanak Jayanti or Onam, and read the report of who picked which optional holiday before building that week's roster, because a single-phlebotomist centre cannot let its only phlebotomist take an optional holiday without a floater in place.

Holidays, sandwich rules and pay

Because ZeniaHR uses the holiday list when it grades attendance, applies sandwich rules and computes pay, decide in advance how a holiday between two leave days is treated. In a lab where most staff work many holidays anyway, charging a holiday as leave because it fell between two leave days feels unfair, so many labs count holidays differently from weekly offs in the sandwich rule. Also decide in the payroll Deduction policy whether weekly offs and holidays are paid, and use branch overrides only where one city's practice really differs.

How to set it up in ZeniaHR

1. Enter national, regional and company holidays for the year in Holiday Calendars, with recurring dates marked.
2. Tag regional holidays to the branches in each city, and leave the processing lab out of closures it does not observe.
3. Build short-hours shifts, such as 7 am to 11 am, and assign them to centres on festival days through the roster.
4. Set an optional holiday pick limit and check the pick report before rostering festival weeks.
5. Let comp-off credit for staff who work a holiday, and set its expiry in the leave rules.

Read more about holiday calendars in ZeniaHR.

Roles this applies to

Frequently asked questions