Department Hierarchy

Build your department tree in Holiday Ocean 360, assign department heads, configure leave coverage and view team capacity at a glance.

Department Hierarchy

The department hierarchy defines your organizational structure and determines how approval routing and capacity calculations work. Manage it from the Org Structure page in the sidebar.

See also the dedicated Org Structure guide for the full unit-side-panel reference.

Building Your Tree

Navigate to Org Structure in the sidebar to manage your org tree:

Click + Add Unit to create a new department or team at any level
Click any unit to open its side panel and set the Parent, Manager, and Members
Use the Tree / Chart toggle in the top-right to switch between editing and presentation views (the chart view is included on the Professional plan and above)

Example structure:

Engineering
+-- Backend
|   +-- Payments
|   +-- Platform
+-- Frontend
|   +-- Design System
+-- QA

Tip

Keep your tree shallow for most organizations. Deep nesting (5+ levels) is only needed for large enterprises with complex reporting structures.

Department Heads

Each department can have a designated head who:

Responsibility	Description
Default approver	Receives leave requests from department employees
Team capacity	Sees real-time coverage data in the `Decision Card`
Escalation target	Receives escalated requests from sub-departments

Assign a department head from the unit’s side panel — select any active user. Becoming a department head grants approver permissions automatically.

Coverage Configuration

Coverage determines how team capacity is calculated when employees request leave. Choose the mode that fits your team:

Mode	Best for	How it works
Simple	Small teams where everyone covers each other	Looks at total headcount vs. minimum required
Specialist	Teams with distinct roles	Capacity calculated per role group (e.g., `1 of 2 payment specialists off = medium risk`)

Viewing Capacity

Both managers and HR admins see real-time capacity per department:

Signal	Meaning
Green	Adequate coverage — safe to approve
Amber	Approaching minimum coverage threshold
Red	Below minimum coverage — high risk

This information feeds directly into the Decision Card so managers can make informed approval decisions.

Warning

A department can only be deleted once it has no employees and no sub-departments. Move them first and update department heads and approval chains. Deletion cannot be undone.