How inconsistent leave approvals create workplace inequality?

In many companies, inequality does not start with salaries or promotion cycles. It begins in small, quiet moments when people ask for time off and receive very different answers. Three people submit leave requests on the same day. Two are approved within an hour. The third is asked to postpone, shorten, or cancel. No one files a complaint. The business carries on. On paper, the leave policy looks neutral. In practice, a hierarchy has just been reinforced about whose life outside work matters more.

These small decisions accumulate. Over months and years, employees remember which colleagues are always encouraged to “go and rest” and which ones are told that “this is a critical week” every time they try to take a break. They recall who got time off for a family trip during a peak period and who had to sacrifice a long planned celebration. Gradually, a narrative forms. Some people experience the company as humane and flexible. Others experience it as rigid and unforgiving. This gap is not random. It is a form of workplace inequality created by inconsistent leave approvals.

Founders and leaders often describe their culture as flexible. They promise candidates that the company respects family time, does not glorify burnout, and allows them to take leave as long as work is covered. The intention is positive. The problem lies in how vague flexibility is interpreted. In the absence of clear guidelines, the actual experience of leave becomes highly dependent on the manager you report to.

One manager might genuinely believe that regular rest leads to better performance. They will remind their team to use their leave entitlement, plan workload in advance, and protect people from guilt when they are offline. Another manager in the same organisation might quietly reward those who remain available during holidays and view leave requests as a sign of weak commitment. Under one leader, you feel safe scheduling a week off. Under another, you think twice before even opening the request form.

This is where inequality creeps in. Certain employees have stronger bargaining power because of their track record, personality, or relationship with their manager. They receive more yeses. Others, especially newer or more anxious team members, hesitate to ask for leave or accept every hint that “now is not ideal” without question. They take less rest than they are entitled to and pay the price in fatigue, stress, and missed life milestones. The written policy may be equal but the lived reality is not.

The impact is not evenly spread. Some groups absorb more of the friction than others. Caregivers and parents are a clear example. Their leave is usually tied to non negotiable dates. A medical appointment for a child, a school orientation, or a procedure for an elderly parent does not move around a sprint schedule. When their requests are regularly challenged while others receive approvals for more flexible travel plans, caregivers receive a painful message. Their responsibilities outside work are viewed as optional complications rather than legitimate constraints.

Junior staff also struggle. They have less visibility into how decisions are made, fewer reference points, and more to lose if they are labelled as demanding. If a manager hints that “we really need everyone on deck this quarter” or repeatedly nudges them to choose shorter breaks, they comply. The result is that the people with the least power end up sacrificing the most rest, even though they are often the ones with the least financial and emotional buffer.

In many Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern contexts, there is an additional layer. Employees may be supporting extended families, observing religious festivals, or traveling across borders to see loved ones. When leave approvals around major celebrations or religious periods are inconsistent, employees start to question whether certain cultures receive more accommodation than others. At that point, leave is no longer just a logistical issue. It becomes a signal about whose traditions and obligations the company truly respects.

Leaders rarely set out to be unfair. Most managers are making decisions in a context of pressure. They are watching targets, juggling client demands, and trying to keep projects on track. Without clear principles, they rely on instinct. They approve leave for the person they trust to keep things under control even when they are offline. They hesitate with the person whose work feels fragile or poorly documented. If a role has been designed such that only one person can perform a critical function, that person’s leave will always feel like a threat to stability. They become a victim of their own indispensability.

In that sense, inconsistent leave approvals are a symptom of deeper structural issues. When knowledge is concentrated, when cross training is neglected, and when workloads are constantly at the red line, managers experience every absence as a crisis. The easiest option is to push back on leave requests. Over time, this creates a pattern. The most responsible and capable employees find it hardest to step away, because the system has become overly dependent on them. What looks like loyalty from the outside is often a trap built by poor organisational design.

Founders usually notice the scale of the problem late. It surfaces during exit interviews when a high performer mentions that they have not had a proper holiday in years because every request turned into a negotiation. It appears as a social media post where someone shares how one colleague was allowed leave for a major festival while another with similar duties was rejected. It shows up in HR data revealing that certain teams routinely take much less leave than others despite having comparable workloads and headcount. Those same teams often have higher turnover and lower engagement.

At that point, it becomes clear that leave approvals are not a minor administrative matter. They are a fairness issue. They are about equal access to rest, health, and family life. When a company sends mixed signals in this area, it damages trust. People begin to protect themselves. They stop believing public messages about “people first” culture and instead pay attention to who actually gets time off without drama.

The way forward is not to approve every request automatically. Businesses have genuine constraints. There will always be peak periods, key launches, and moments when everyone is needed. The real solution is to move leave decisions away from personal favors and towards a transparent system. That begins with visibility. Leaders need to know how much leave is actually being used across different teams, not just how much is allocated. If some departments consistently underuse their entitlement, that is not a coincidence. It is a sign that either the workload is unmanageable or the manager is discouraging time off. Both require intervention.

Clarity is the next step. Many policies contain vague language such as “subject to business needs”. This phrase can justify almost any outcome. Instead, organisations should give managers simple criteria to consider before rejecting or modifying a request. They might ask whether the employee has had recent time off, whether tasks can realistically be reassigned, and what the actual risk is to customers or projects if the work is delayed. When decisions are made against explicit questions rather than gut feelings, they tend to be more consistent and easier to explain.

Designing for redundancy is equally important. If certain months or quarters are always intense, leaders must decide whether to increase capacity, cross train staff, or restructure workflow so that leave remains possible. When approvals during busy periods are always given to the loudest or most assertive personalities, the company unintentionally rewards those who push hardest and overlooks those who are conflict averse, even when both are performing well. A fair system protects quieter employees from being squeezed out of their entitlement.

As a founder reflecting on early leadership choices, it is easy to see how leave approvals can be underestimated. It is tempting to treat them as routine HR chores rather than as signals of culture. Yet they reveal powerful truths about how a company values its people. If there were a chance to start again, it would make sense to define what flexibility really means in practical terms, to ensure that no single person is so critical that they cannot step away, and to review leave usage data regularly at a leadership level.

Normalising full use of leave entitlement is also an important cultural statement. When founders and senior leaders talk openly about their own breaks, plan for their teams to rest, and refuse to celebrate constant availability, they send a different message. They show that sustainability matters more than short bursts of overwork. That gives employees permission to be human, not machines.

Inconsistent leave approvals may look like scattered, individual decisions, but together they form a powerful pattern. They reveal who gets to have a whole life and who is expected to fit their personal world into the gaps left by work. For any founder who claims to care about fairness and inclusion, this is a pattern worth examining closely. Inequality in the workplace often begins at the level of these small, everyday choices. When leaders design systems that treat leave as a predictable right rather than a discretionary privilege, they move one step closer to a culture that feels genuinely just for everyone who works there.