Tips and tricks for your holiday planning

You can find an overview of how many vacation days and overtime you currently have available on ETHIS. After logging in, for which you’ll need your ETH username and password (plus a VPN connection if you’re working from home), you’ll be taken to the ETHIS homepage. Here, under “Personal data > Time management”, you can find your “Time sheet” > “Attendances and abscences”. In the right of this page, there is a tab called “Annual overview”. Here you can find not only the working hours you have to complete or have completed each month, but also the number of free hours you have available as a result of your vacation entitlement or an loyalty bonus granted for years of service.

By clicking on “Edit time credits”, you can see further details of your available credit from the current year and any carry-forward from the previous year – i.e. how many hours of vacation and overtime you have carried over from 2021 into the new year. In the example shown here, there are 205 hours of vacation available for the current year and 61.5 hours from the previous year, making 266.5 hours in total.

Be smart with your free days

Holidays are great. And they’re even better when you spread them tactically throughout the year to get the maximum free time possible. If, for example, you take your vacation days either side of public holidays, or on the “bridge day” between a public holiday and the weekend, you can extend your holiday without having to use up a lot of free days. Take a look at the calendar to see how you can creatively apply this holiday planning strategy for maximum effect. Of course, for all your excitement about your time off, you still have to be considerate of your colleagues when planning your vacation and ensure mutual cover. Talk to each other at an early stage and make compromises: “I’ll cover for you around the Sechseläuten holiday if you cover for me around the one for Knabenschiessen.”