Company wants me to pay back holiday days.

[Mooshamoo]

I started in a job in November 2022. We have an online annual leave system .
At the start of January 2023, 21 days on our online system became available to me for me to take.

I asked my manager could I take two weeks off at the start of the year. I took the last week of January and the first week of February off. This was approved by my manager. I took them. I was then moved to a new manager. Which was the way the company worked. New starters were with one manager. After two months you were changed to another manager

The company was pretty abusive and at the end of February I decided to leave.

I left. I then got an email from my second manager saying I had taken more annual leave days in the time I worked there, then I had accrued. And that I have to pay this annual leave money back. It is 550 euro. I'm in Ireland. This is a lot of money to me as i am now in between jobs.

Can they do this. My first manager who approved the annual leave days, never told me that I did not have enough annual leave days to take. She approved them. She never told me at any stage that if I left the company that I would have to pay these annual leave days back. If I had known that I wouldn't have taken them .

Can they do this to me now?

Surely she should have said : you only have so much annual leave built up, so you can only take 2 days?

No, that’s not how it works. Otherwise no one would be able to take a decent stretch (eg 2 weeks) until half way through the year when they had accrued enough, and then everyone would be wanting to take it all at once.

Some places won’t let you take A/L that you haven’t accrued but others will. You should be able to see in your contract that you’d be paid for A/L you hadn’t taken or you’d have to pay back leave you had taken too much of.

ultimately you must realise that in only a matter of months you hadn’t accrued 21 days of leave and that was your full year entitlement?

It's probably in writing in your contract somewhere. In any case, this is absolutely normal everywhere and it's also common sense. Entirely your problem now.

This is standard. Although usually they would deduct it from your last payslip rather than trying to claw it back after.

Unless you had a serious falling out I'd be surprised if they actually took you to court to get it.

I guarantee it'll be in your contract or employee handbook somewhere - it's a very common rule and your responsibility to be up to date with these things, not your manager to warn you in advance of you handing your notice in

This is so standard, I don't think your manager would have felt the need to specifically tell you when you booked it. I line manage people and never tell them how much holiday they have actually accrued when they book leave early in the year. It will be in your T&C's.

Of course they can do it.

They let you take days you hadn’t accrued yet assuming you would stay with the business and still only have the normal years allowance.

They paid you for holidays you hadn’t accrued yet and then you left.
YABVU

I would have though that is was pretty bleedin' obvious that if your leave entitlement for 1 year was 'x' days and you took most of them then left, you would have to pay them back because you were not 'entitled' to these.
It isn't rocket science

Sorry to add to all the other posters, this is absolutely normal for almost any employment contract and will be in the one you signed.

They didn't warn you as it's such standard practice.

So yes it needs to be paid back

You get given the entire allowance you'll accrue in a year, at the beginning of that holiday year. You don't get given it a day at a time as you accrue it.

My holiday allowance is 20 days. It runs January to December. I could book 20 days from today if I wanted, even though I've only accrued 3.3 (I think). It's just how it works. Most people already know that, so I'm not surprised it wasn't explicitly explained to you.

Unfortunately you don’t really have a leg to stand on? They are entitled to request the money back. As you said yourself you were naive, you should have thought about it when taking 2 weeks that you had not accrued and asked questions. However this would have been standard most places I worked in.

is there a company handbook? Did you read it? This is information you should have found out and not blame your employer for now.

I'm not in Ireland but yes they can in the U.K.

You accrue annual leave each month but they allow you to take it ahead but if you leave before that quota is accrued you have to pay it back, typically out of your final pay

They would have assumed you were staying for the full calendar year, which would account for the full allocation of annual leave available for you to take.

As you didn't stay for the full calendar year, your annual leave was clearly reviewed and the allocation of available days would be worked out pro rata. There is more information here - www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/employment_rights_and_conditions/leave_and_holidays/annual_leave_public_holidays.html

You didn't stay working in the company long enough to be entitled to the full allocation of annual leave days, so yes, the company is correct in looking to be repaid for the time you took as annual leave but you weren't working for them.

*Why let me take two weeks?

And why not inform me at any stage that If I left the company I would have to repay these hours.

Surely it is their responsibility to tell me that if I leave the company I will have to repay these hours.*

How old are you? You sound very immature.

How could you reasonably think they would just pay you to be off for two weeks when you worked like a month of the year!

I don't know about Irish employment law but in the UK you would be liable to pay it back.

Surely it is their responsibility to tell me that if I leave the company I will have to repay these hours

it is your responsibility to read and understand your contract of employment.

employers cannot possibly be expected to think of every single “what if” scenario.

plus it is common sense.

They should have deducted it from your final salary, but if there was no pay run between you handing your notice in and leaving they wouldn't have been able to do this, so yes you need to pay it back.

Read your contract/ staff hand book but generally yes, all companies work like this, the assumption being you will be working the whole year, otherwise you could join a company take all the annual entitlement and then leave meaning they are paying you full pay for hardly any work (which in effect is what you are asking for).

In a lot of companies if they pay for training for you and you leave within a certain time period they can make you pay back the training cost too. Just for future reference.

Could you ask them if you could pay it back in installments if you can't afford it?

She wouldn't have been expecting me to stay all year.

It is a company with an extremely high turnover of staff. People quit every week. It is a call centre

I started in November with a team of 10 people. In February, 3 of that team were left.
People quit all the time because it is abusive.
I wouldn't have quit, if I didn't absolutely have to for my own sanity.

They are breaking labour laws. For example they were giving me back to back calls, and 20 seconds between calls, and so much technical system work that the only way to do all the work was to work through every second of my "breaks".

So I neve got a single break throughout the day. And I also had to stay and work one hour unpaid every evening. So I was working 9.5 hours without breaks. And when I say work, it was work every single second. You wouldn't get a second off calls.

I'm just really upset as if I had known I'd have to pay this back, I wouldn't have left,l the job, I would have tried to struggle on a bit more and wait until I got a new job.

Now I've quit the job and have no income and also owe them money. Its awful

They didn't verbally explain because it is standard practice and they would assume you would know this (I'm assuming you aren't 17 in your first ever job)

Lots of companies will let you use unaccrued holidays though. It's better for resource planning to have holidays spread through the year. It'd be chaos as everyone would have to take time off in March or whenever holiday year ends. When in reality people want time off for a holiday/ in summer or for childcare commitments. Your manager was probably happy you were using up your entitlement at unpopular times of the year.

This is standard - completely normal. Are you very young or is this your first or second job not to know this?

As loads of others have said - this is standard practice. Did you really think they’d given you 21 days holiday for the work you’d done in Jan and Feb - that would mean you get 120 days holiday a year if you extrapolate it over the year.
Is this your first job or first non temp job?

I mean, you could just not pay it. I highly doubt they will take you to court or anything.

But they are entitled to it.

Do you mind me asking, why would you think that you would be entitled to a full allocation of annual leave which is based on an employee working for the company for 12 months if you weren't working for the company for 12 months?
Even if you took 50% of the full allocation of annual leave, that would mean that you'd have to work for the company for 50% of the year?

It's basic maths, right???

You're going to have to either put the charge on a credit card and pay that back at whatever pace you can as I don't think employers like taking payments in instalments from former employees or you'll have to speak directly with the company to see if they will actually take an instalment plan but the crux of the situation is that you owe them.