Holidays and annual leave

This post is waaaayyyy late (by more than 2 months), but hey, better late than never, right?

When I spoke to a Singaporean colleague, he said that over there, the annual leave cycle ends on 31 March annually, while the school holidays is in Decembers. What this means is, the percentage of workers taking their leave in December will not be as big as Malaysia. Parents who wishes to spend more time with their children and take them for holidays do so in December, while the others will do so in March (or the first quarter of the year).

This is a win-win situation. Offices/workplace won't be too under-staffed, and holiday-makers won't need to fight over hotel vacancies and perhaps hotels won't increase their peak period premiums too much.

And the best thing is, it's a very simple change that is easy to implement, and yet has a tangible impact. Of course, one could argue that everyone should plan properly and not leave it till last minute (Dec) to take their annual leaves, but behavioral change is more difficult to attain than a simple policy change.