Having to book holiday leave by Jan 31st each year?

[Doomsdayiscoming]

Told this week that our new system will be that you have to book your holiday by 31st Jan each year for rest of the calendar year.

I immediately didn’t understand the email because to me this is utterly crazy. Company taken over last May by European company. We were also forced to take all our 2020 allowance by the end of 2020, no carry over (historically 8 days). All seems very controlling to me. Legally they couldn’t force the carry over thing as yet they haven’t bothered to give us new contracts.

Anyone have anything similar to this??

Our holiday policy is even tighter in that we can only have 2 weeks January-March as people were leaving it all until then and as you said there were too few people in. Honestly it isn’t that bad, I spread mine out across the year and change as needed but I know I want 2 weeks summer, 1 around Easter, 1 feb/March and usually one in November and I just alter as needed.

YANBU. That seems really inflexible. I mean, things come up that you may need time off for. I suspect that will affect job satisfaction for a lot of people.

@HighSpecWhistle

YANBU. That seems really inflexible. I mean, things come up that you may need time off for. I suspect that will affect job satisfaction for a lot of people.

Yep.

It’s a win for the employer. They get control, and I guess some sort of benefit in terms of management.

I fail to see the win for the employee.

Stressing about having to ask to change your holiday for the 9th time? (You need line manager and HR approval)

Sounds normal. DH has always had to do this. He tries to submit in the first week of January so he has a choice!

We can carry over up to 5 days and book as late as you like. I've often decided to take a few days at the last minute and it's hardly been an issue. The only thing they do ask is that you arrange for colleagues to cover your caseload in case anything urgent crops up.

Yep, it's pretty normal.

Most places will also allow you to change your dates at a later time if there's availability.

Carry over not allowed at my place as we don’t have a large workforce. Planning around holidays is difficult.

I worked for a bank in the 90s and we had to book all leave in November - every single day - no holding any back for emergencies. We also had to say which was our “main holiday - Christmas/summer etc. They then had a big list in order of length of service. If you got your main holiday you were highly unlikely to get any other “peak “ dates.
In my current role we book as we go but we can’t carry forward any leave.

Completely normal in many sectors, especially where staff planning is required to offer a service eg banking.

This plan and the reasonably short notice of implementation seems unreasonable to me.

I can understand having a maximum number of people off at any one time, having a separate system/allocation process for Christmas and any other time that might be very oversubscribed though.

I can get no carry over as well, as this reduces the likelihood of everyone wanting some times to use up holidays. I also understand some arrangements that ensure people actually have their holidays, to help avoid illness and also as auditors once observed, helps reduce fraud chances.

I know some people are incapable of planning anything ahead and need a nudge from time to time. (Just as some people are always late).

Even with all those reasons I fail to see this is reasonable, and does as pointed out leave a lot of discretion to managers, and accusations of favouritism are bound to happen.

Wouldn’t work for a company who tried to enforce booking holidays a year in advance.

I understand that’s a privileged position. But I wouldn’t.

It’s understandable for some industries to ask for major leave to be scheduled reasonably far in advance and of course there will be jobs which need to be planned for.

But for the majority of roles I would not expect this to be the case and if want to know at interview stage yup. I’d be furious if I took a regular office role and then found this to be the policy.

I can see why they are doing it this year. Otherwise everyone will leave it until covid rules relax and all want to be off at once.
It is annoying though. Although can see it's fairer if there's a need for not too many to be off at once.
If you want short notice days for funerals or other things you end up having to go off sick

Not allowing carry over is standard and perfectly reasonable. Asking you to book an entire years holiday by the end of January is unreasonable I think.

(In retail) we have no carry-over and embargo on taking time between mid-Nov and the first week of Jan. we are expected to take 4/5 of our holiday as full weeks, ideally booked in at the start of the holiday year but we can book up to 18m ahead if we want to. It’s fine to be honest, but up to now I don’t have school age children, maybe when I do it’ll be inconvenient.

@peak2021

This plan and the reasonably short notice of implementation seems unreasonable to me.

I can understand having a maximum number of people off at any one time, having a separate system/allocation process for Christmas and any other time that might be very oversubscribed though.

I can get no carry over as well, as this reduces the likelihood of everyone wanting some times to use up holidays. I also understand some arrangements that ensure people actually have their holidays, to help avoid illness and also as auditors once observed, helps reduce fraud chances.

I know some people are incapable of planning anything ahead and need a nudge from time to time. (Just as some people are always late).

Even with all those reasons I fail to see this is reasonable, and does as pointed out leave a lot of discretion to managers, and accusations of favouritism are bound to happen.

Yeah the short notice was one of the most weird things to be honest.

Apparently this is the policy at the European site. None of us knew until we did some digging. So it begs the question, why wait until the 21st January to tell us? It was out of the blue to everyone on our site, including the previous owner of the company, who is now an employee. Why not tell us 6 months ago?

@FlowS snap!!

@2020iscancelled

Wouldn’t work for a company who tried to enforce booking holidays a year in advance.

I understand that’s a privileged position. But I wouldn’t.

It’s understandable for some industries to ask for major leave to be scheduled reasonably far in advance and of course there will be jobs which need to be planned for.

But for the majority of roles I would not expect this to be the case and if want to know at interview stage yup. I’d be furious if I took a regular office role and then found this to be the policy.

Same. I won’t be working here much longer, but I feel bad my colleagues/friends. It has become toxic.

It's not unusual. I've worked for companies that have stricter rules than you describe.

God, I'd hate this.

Some people live in families where free time is not predictable every year!

I usually request my holiday leave about a month in advance. Guess I'm lucky.

Think yourself lucky. I've already had to book all of my planned holiday until December 2022. There are 10 weeks in each year that I'm not allowed to take off, which includes each half term and 2 weeks in the summer holidays, which was a pain when my DC was still at school.

@Hoghgyni

Think yourself lucky. I've already had to book all of my planned holiday until December 2022. There are 10 weeks in each year that I'm not allowed to take off, which includes each half term and 2 weeks in the summer holidays, which was a pain when my DC was still at school.

Did you know this when you took the job?

I’d quit if this was my case

I like to travel so sometimes I book 1 year in advance (I booked last year in January 3 weeks in November which got cancelled) but this year I won’t book anything til later in the year

I’ve never had this requirement and would leave if there were job opportunities

That’s annoying, thankfully we just need a few weeks notice or less if no-one off. Especially now who knows when they want to take leave in 2021. I’m carrying the full 9 days for the first time ever this year, most companies allow a carry over so very silly they aren’t allowing it

No carry over is pretty normal in the UK. Having to book all holidays for the year by the end of January is more unusual, but I guess it depends on the sector.