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?

In the UK, they used to be able to give people no holidays for the first six months, and then they could only take what they had already accrued in the first year. The law changed, so they can't do that any more. It's entirely possible that this is European law, and Ireland is subject to the same.

It's not their responsibility to tell you. Can you imagine every time that you start a new job, they have to remember to tell you the way holiday entitlement works? That's basically what you are suggesting here. They don't know what you do and don't know. And it may well be in your contract or an employee handbook if you have one - that's the kind of thing that they are for.

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

you can’t possibly know that.

many of us have worked in call centres and now how demanding they can be. IME a fast turnover of staff often means that employees are extra clued up on exactly how much leave they accrue per month.

Of course you owe them! HOW can you think you don't? Sounds like you were working for AIB or somewhere like that with idle time etc. Crap place to work in fairness but you still owe that money back.

I don’t mean to be rude as it’s obviously a very stressful situation, but common sense dictates that they wouldn’t pay you for 2 weeks holiday when you only actually worked there for a month. Otherwise people would take a job, use all of their annual leave and then quit.
Have a look in your contract/paperwork/employers handbook. It will be in there somewhere.

You're being deliberately obtuse here.

Of course you need to pay back the holiday.

If you are out of work and can't pay it back you need to make a proposal to them because they may well withhold a reference until this has been paid.

You could propose 10 EUROS a week until you find a new job and then 100 EUROS a week once you are back in work.

Would you honestly think that in theory you could start a job, have two weeks off on leave and then leave the job and still expect to get paid. What you're expecting is the same principle. I wouldn't expect to have to explain the contract or standard leave arrangements to anyone who'd had any kind of job in the past.

That us an entirely separate issue and irrelevant to the fact that you do owe them the leave you had taken.

also they’re not going to say “we’re an abusive company that no one stays in so here’s your holiday entitlement, but don’t use it all at once because you’ll be quitting soon”

Your update paints a picture of a very toxic work environment but unfortunately changes absolutely nothing about your specific situation

@Mooshamoo - "She wouldn't have been expecting me to stay all year."
She might not have been expecting you to stay all year but your employer was, you know, the company whose name is on the letterhead of the employment contract you signed?

If they were breaking any employment regulations/laws, you have every right to complain about them using the correct pathways.

I'm sorry you're in the situation you're in but this isn't the company's fault, it's yours.

Of course you have to pay it back. If it was a case of you leaving without taking any annual leave then they would have owed you for those days. I'm in ireland also.

I'm not saying I don't owe them the leave. I'm saying if I had known I would have made entirely different decisions. Do you think if I had known , I would have quit my job and have no income and have to pay them back hundreds of euro. I genuinely didn't know. And now I've quit And now I've put myself up shit creek. And now I'm having a really awful day realising this. What have I done to myself. I could cry. I wish I could go back last week and think about it longer and not quit. I genuinely didn't realise

Any adult that works in the modern world knows this is how annual leave works.

I’m really struggling to understand how you don’t know this?

Stop trying to blame them.

Not knowing the rules is your problem. There is really no need for manager to warn people when they want to take a leave about "what happens if you leave". It's normal in many, many countries.

Annual leave accrues throughout the year. This will be covered in your terms and conditions in the staff handbook/company website. If you have not bothered to read them, you cannot reasonably complain that you were unaware. And anyway, it's sort of obvious that you can't have half a year's worth of holiday if you are in the job for less than half a year.

I don't understand how you don't understand this.

Yes this in normal in all jobs. It's probably written into your contract too. Holiday is always pro rated.

I am also in ROI and vaguely work in this area but I haven't done payroll for a number of years. For others giving advice our systems is very very similar to the UK so you are all correct.

Firstly, I am taking that you started on 01/11/2022 and finished 24/02/2023 so 4 months. The ""The statutory leave year runs from 1 April to 31 March. Many employers use the calendar year (January to December) instead of the statutory leave year for administrative reasons but this does not affect your statutory leave entitlements."" www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/employment_rights_and_conditions/leave_and_holidays/annual_leave_public_holidays.html

So unless you took other annual leave from when you started you would have accrued 7 days of annual leave (21days/12months * 4 months service). So you have taken 3 days annual leave that you did not accrue and are not entitled to, so yes you do need to repay it to the company.

From your other comments it sounds like they are crap to work for!! The things you have said about no breaks/ unpaid over time etc I would be taking to the WRC www.workplacerelations.ie/en/ they will be able to let you know if you have a case about the conditions.

But in relation to the annual leave, yes you do owe it back. I suggest you call the citizens advice 0818 07 4000 they are extremely helpful. They don't ask for your name/ pps no/ company etc so you can talk to them freely and get the advice you need without worrying they will pass on any information.

Sorry OP, but this is standard practice. If you take more than you would be owed for the part year you worked, you pay it back.

If you take less than you would be owed for the part year you worked, they would pay you for the remaining days.

This is how it always works.

That doesn't take away from the fact that it sounds like a miserable place to have worked.

You accrue holiday days across the year so their position sounds pretty standard to me.

The last job that I was in , we were only allowed to take annual leave that we had accrued. So they would say to us " you have a week to take". For example.

This is the first job I've ever been in where all annual leave became available to me at the start of the year.
I even sent my my manager an email at the time asking was it ok for me to take annual leave at the start of the year as I wasn't sure if it was ok. I didn't know if I needed to work more time to build it up. I asked her. She said it was ok and she approved it.

I didn't take the annual leave to go on holidays. I took the annual leave to take care of my mother who had a heart attack in January.

Mooshamoo · Today 10:21
I'm not saying I don't owe them the leave. I'm saying if I had known I would have made entirely different decisions. Do you think if I had known , I would have quit my job and have no income and have to pay them back hundreds of euro.

Doesn't make sense. What did you think would happen? Did you expect them to just let you get away with taking more leave than you're entitled to?

I'll explain it in simple terms - You.hadn't.earned.it.all.yet!

Sorry, no functioning human can be this 'naive'.

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

Don't be daft. Until you resign, an employer will assume that you will continue to work there for the foreseeable future,

I'm really sorry you are having a tough time with this. But think about it, do you think every workplace needs to tell every employee when they start work that this is how holiday entitlement works?

Do you think your next employer will need to tell you? And the one after that, and the one after that? They don't know that you don't understand that.

I hope your next job is a much better experience for you.

Have you had your final pay packet? Normally an adjustment would be made there to recover any holiday that hadn't been accrued. If you have been paid then you will have to pay them back. Next job you get make sure you read the T&Cs in your contract and if you don't understand what they mean get someone to explain them. It's bonkers that you believe people can move from job to job taking a full years worth of AL in the first few months and then change jobs. We'd all be at it if that was the case.

They have extremely high staff turnover. Three people on my team quit the day before me.