Work won’t let me cancel leave

I mean, it’s a dick move by you to bags prime leave and then cancel, but you should check your contract and/or instrument you are employed under.

such rigidity is weird but it seems like you were trying to nab a prime holiday slot without much consideration for your colleagues and so I understand if your manager is feeling irritated.

that said I’d be getting a very sore throat that likely develops into flu if they insist you take it as holiday

But I don't think that's what the poster meant - I'd take annual leave or Flexi for a scheduled hospital appointment for example, not sick leave.

But the OP isn’t swapping with a colleague. It’s too late for the colleague to plan leave now. That’s why they complained.

Most people do? Every where I’ve worked it’s been strictly prohibited to take annual leave when you’re sick, it’s cancelled and reclassified as sick leave so you still have an actual legally mandated break from work through the year.

My work is actually driving me bonkers by not allowing leave to be booked very far in advance because “some people might not know what they want yet”. Why should that be the problem of those who are organised??

DH’s work brought in a policy that ‘prime’ time annual leave (school holidays, Christmas, Easter and their year end) can only be cancelled with at least 6 weeks notice. Primarily to stop people booking leave just to block the spot then not using it as that was starting to cause real bad feeling.

Non prime times you can cancel automatically with as much notice as your leave and up to last minute at manager’s discretion.

My workplace it is allowed but I have family members where all leave must be booked in January for the whole calendar year and no changes are permitted at all.

At my work, hours are closely budgeted across departments, so if your department has two full time employees it has 80 hours of payroll available in any given week. But holidays and sickness don’t count towards those payroll hours (to allow you to get a temp worker in if required or offer overtime to cover holiday). Most of the time we don’t get a temp worker in to cover holidays, but we do offer the unused hours out as overtime to other teams. If the other teams had taken up those hours, you wouldn’t be allowed to cancel holiday as your department wouldn’t have any hours available for you to work.

So it’s not necessarily unreasonable for employers to want to control when you can cancel holiday. And you aren’t giving much notice either…

*I have annual leave next week. If I wanted to cancel it, I'd just log into Sage, select the leave and cancel it, I wouldn't need to ask anybody.

We can only have so many off at once, but nobody takes umbrage if you cancel something you'd had booked*

But not all businesses can run this way - and I would imagine that somebody might be a bit put out if you cancelled leave booked at peak time that had meant that somebody else hadn't been able to book that leave.

For example, I found a cruise that was over October half term last year, I checked at work but someone else had booked the leave. No problem, that's just the luck of the draw, I had to sort something else, and it meant I missed out on the cruise as it was obviously on a set date. But if they had subsequently cancelled the leave with a week to go, I might have felt a bit put out.

It is too late for the colleague who wanted it to arrange the holiday that they wanted

@ISpyNoPlumPie Most people wouldn’t use annual leave for emergencies or sickness.

Actually, most people do.

What's the alternative? You just don't show up or what? Sounds like a quick way to get fired.

Agree it’s absolutely up to your employer but seems strange you can’t cancel it, especially as you have to book it so far in advance

unless you swapping with a colleague leaves a huge gap in an area I don’t see why they wouldn’t just agree to it

That sounds wild. I’ve never worked anywhere where you can’t cancel your leave!

Love that loads of people come on here and pretend that it’s totally normal not to be able to cancel your leave!

Yep you clearly booked it so no one else could have it, and wanted to leave your options open

In the same vein that an employer can refuse leave without adequate notice, they can refuse cancellations with inadequate notice. Sounds pretty fair to me. That some posters can cancel at last minute with no consequence? Consider yourselves lucky.

Your employer doesn't have to allow you to cancel leave - it may cause problems later in the year if leave is not taken when booked.

For example, I work in a small team of 10 people, our workplace is open 7 days a week, and there are quite a few days over the year when we cannot take leave due to the needs of the business. We get 30 days leave, and only one person can take leave at a time (barring emergencies/illness). It means that there's not a lot of leeway with holiday requests. While our manager tries to be flexible where he can, if someone were to book leave at a peak time and then want to cancel it, it would make it very difficult to fit it in again later in the year, and might cause problems fitting everyones leave in.

I have annual leave next week. If I wanted to cancel it, I'd just log into Sage, select the leave and cancel it, I wouldn't need to ask anybody.

We can only have so many off at once, but nobody takes umbrage if you cancel something you'd had booked.

Most people wouldn’t use annual leave for emergencies or sickness.

I think it’s a bit shitty OP and probably wouldn’t be allowed where I work. Too late notice and really thoughtless towards your colleagues. I’ve also previously worked on fixed leave rotas so count myself lucky now that I’m even allowed to pick my annual leave in the first place. Best not be a dick about it.

I think you need to check with HR as to what the Policy is.

I suppose it would also depend on what sort of sector you work in. If it's manufacturing (continuous production) or a public facing service such as healthcare there are probably minimum staffing requirements for various departments.

If it's an office based situation they might be more flexible.

Don’t understand why OP and colleague can’t swap or even swap with someone who was next on the list but couldn’t get the time. That person wants the time off and OP doesn’t. Seems ridiculous to not just allow it. This rigidity is alien to me also. It’s not like the colleague won’t be able to enjoy the time off. Boss is just spiting two people and for what? I could only understand it if it left a team short or cover was needed.

I'm not sure if it's unreasonable or not, but you can certainly un-take leave in my workplace, as long as you're not trying to swap it to a time when there's not enough cover.

I think this is weird, I cancel leave all the time if I'm able to arrange childcare nearer the time, and employer is always delighted! We can also only have a certain number off at the same time so we often ask each other if we really need a specific day, and people do swap if they can and no hard feelings if they can't.

But then her manager simply say no to the requested leave. Life isn’t straight forward, things change. I couldn’t be a petty about it.

You can't bag the best leave so that nobody else can have it just in case you feel like taking it when the time comes......and then back out. That's really shitty.