How to plan around public holidays in a remote team

Why the usual way fails

Each country has its own public holidays, and some move every year, so a list you made in January is out of date by spring. Holidays usually live in a separate place from vacation requests, which means a manager has to check two sources to see who is actually around. Spreadsheets can hold both, but someone has to copy in each country's dates by hand and keep them current. And if leave balances count holidays differently by country, the maths gets messy fast for a small team with no HR person. Chat makes it worse. Someone mentions an upcoming holiday in a thread, it scrolls away, and two weeks later nobody remembers it. Shared calendars from each country exist, but subscribing everyone to five of them clutters the view and still says nothing about who booked vacation around those dates.

How Cala HQ helps

Cala HQ is a time-off tracker for small, remote and global teams. It has built-in public holiday calendars for more than 50 countries and shows them next to approved leave on one shared team calendar. When you set your policy you choose the holidays for each country, along with allowances and carry-over rules. Approved leave can sync to Google Calendar or Outlook, and a Monday email lists who is off that week, so the information reaches people where they already look. Every employee also gets a personal dashboard with their remaining balance and upcoming holidays.

Step by step

1. Create a free workspace and set your leave policy, including holidays for each country.
2. Invite your team and group people into teams with a leave manager for each.
3. Open the shared calendar to see public holidays alongside approved time off.
4. Turn on calendar sync so approved leave shows up in Google Calendar or Outlook.
5. Check the weekly digest on Monday before you set deadlines for the week.

Tips

• Look two weeks ahead when you plan a release or a client meeting, not just at today. Most holiday clashes are visible well in advance if the dates sit on the same calendar as the plan.
• Agree on a simple rule for shared deadlines, for example that no deadline falls on a holiday in the country of the person who owns the work.
• Use department filters when the team grows, so each lead sees only the people they actually plan work with each week.
• Set a minimum notice period for leave requests. Combined with visible holidays, it gives everyone time to move work around instead of finding out on the day.

Questions