So I am a relatively new supervisor at my center. We are not a large center - our 4 shifts are (supposed to have) 5 people per shift, with minimum staffing of 3 at any time required. Supervisors have discretion of the schedule for leave requests, as long as 3 people are there and the employees have time available to take, they can be off.

Up until now, my shift has been at bare minimum staffing with 3 people - if one of my people or myself took a day off, someone else had to volunteer/be voluntold to cover our shift. Obviously, this means that we have not taken any holidays off for a long time because that is a... let’s go with “mean” move, making someone who is supposed to be off work on a holiday. However, I am preparing to release one of my trainees so we will soon have enough people to allow one person off at a time.

We are coming up on Valentine’s Day, which is obviously a day everyone wants off. So my question is this: how do you or your agencies handle deciding who gets holidays off FAIRLY? I have been on shifts where the supervisor went by seniority, which meant THEY were the ones who got the holiday off, and I don’t want to be that kind of supervisor. Any good ideas for how to be fair and give everyone an opportunity? I have considered putting names in a hat, but not sure how that would go with leaving it up to chance.