"Health care jumped out immediately," said Jose Gaona, vice president of product strategy at Replicon. "That is a very complex business because they're 24/7. There's a shortage, still, of registered nurses, and there's all sorts of scheduling that has to happen."
Replicon looked at 664 businesses that use its software during the period January, 2014, through June, 2015, for the data.
More than 17 percent of the hours rejected during the period studied were in health care, the highest of any industry, on a weighted average basis. That means that based on the number of firms that use Replicon's software from each industry, employees of hospitals, clinics and health-care labs were the least likely to have their time-off requests approved.
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It may come as something of a surprise that it's not blue-collar industries such as manufacturing and construction where employees have the most trouble getting time off. But it makes sense if you consider how the industries operate around production schedules, Gaona said.
"They're kind of on timelines, and they're producing the right amount," Gaona said. "They know they're on the job for a certain amount of time."