Line Manager Guidance

This is the first year that Loughborough University has offered ALPS. It is a popular and successful staff benefit in many other universities and organisations and increases our staff benefit offer. However, we can only estimate what the demand for ALPS will be in this first year. As line managers, you have a really important role in the success of this process and the following information is designed to help you.

The following information is intended to help you prepare for the ALPS scheme being launched. It will also help you to

• manage applications received from your team,
• understand the reasons why you might be required to decline an application, and to
• give you the answer to some anticipated questions.

The ALPS application window is during the month of February each year, but you can start the conversations with your staff about their intentions to apply earlier than that. Seeking early intention to apply will help you to estimate the likely demand and impact on your department and team. This can help with timetabling and scheduling work demand.

You might find it helpful to prepare an estimate of the amount of hours that your department / team could reasonably manage, which you could share with your staff ahead of the application window to help manage expectations.

If you know that members of your teams have particular special events or dates coming up for which they might want to purchase additional annual leave, it can be helpful to know about these.

Please remember: Purchasing additional annual leave does not guarantee leave can be taken at the requested time. Don’t forget that the requesting and authorisation of annual leave (whether contractual or purchased) follows your usual leave booking processes. 

You will receive a notification email that an application has been submitted by a member of your team and the amount of hours they have requested. 

It is expected that the majority of applications will be authorised.

The email will detail what you should do next and includes a link to an approval form. Clicking on this link will enable you to:

• Authorise the application in full
• Authorise the application in part (for example if your member of staff has more than one role; or you can only authorise part of the request)
• Decline the application

Here are a number of reasons why an application must be declined at this point. 

1. The member of staff is ineligible due to their contract type. 
2. The member of staff does not have 12 months service by the 1st April 2025. 
3. You have identified a significant organisational/operational detriment that approving the application would cause. 
4. Your department/team cannot support ALPS due to the working practices/patterns. 
5. Authorising annual leave purchase would incur costs to cover the absence (e.g. overtime or agency costs).  
6. You manage a department or team that is unable to support ALPS.

If there are other reasons that are not listed above, please speak with the Reward and Benefits team. If an application is declined at any stage, an email will be sent to the applicant detailing the reasons why. This will also be copied to you.

In March the list of received applications will be shared with your School/Service Admin team who will input the records into iTrent and share with you the total number of applications in your team. 

At this point, the School/Service can review the total number of hours requested. If the total number is greater than the School/Service can support, adjustments can be made in consultation with line managers and applicants. Please seek advice from the Reward and Benefits team if this is the case.

The process then moves through the HR Payroll to complete finance checks and to our HR Services teams who create Variation of Contract emails.

At the end of the process all authorised purchased leave is added to local leave balances to be used within the leave year May 2025 to April 2026. Payments from salary commence.