On-Call Processes and Policies - Holiday Coverage Planning

During the year, team members ordinarily space their PTO out. However, between mid-November and mid-January, many team members wish to take time off to celebrate the holiday season.

Rotation leaders must pay special attention to PTO during these times to ensure adequate coverage on their rotation.

Every year, there is a general holiday coverage issue created in the Production Engineering tracker and rotation leaders will be assigned to this issue to remind them to create their own coverage issues.

Planning Timeline

Holiday coverage planning must begin in October

Final holiday coverage plans must be published before the 4th Thursday in November (US Thanksgiving holiday)

Coverage Options

Rotation leaders are responsible for arranging their rotation’s coverage. This can be done through several suggested approaches:

  • Extended shifts: Team members cover longer periods (12-hours instead of 8-hours). Not currently recommended for 24x5 rotations.
  • Trades and Overrides: Team members who are not scheduled can provide coverage for primary on-call engineers
  • Cross-team support: Coordination with related teams that have overlapping expertise
  • Splitting the shift: Have several team members each cover a smaller time period
  • Reduced scope: For teams who can’t arrange coverage, start a conversation with the Network and Incident Management team to explore other options early

Can a rotation leader deny leave?

According to the PTO Policy, a manager needs to request a change to PTO plans within 48 hours of those plans being entered into Workday.

This is why we ask for end-of-year planning to begin in October, so that we can be ahead of PTO requests.

Communication Requirements

Last modified November 27, 2025: Remove trailing spaces (14d41894)
View page source - Edit this page - please contribute. Creative Commons License