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?

Yes this is standard at work I've a system that tells me what im entitled to year to date against what I've taken

Thinking the other way, if you hadn't taken the allotted holiday, you would expect to be paid in lieu

That's how it's always worked with every employer I've had.

Could you inform them you can’t pay but you’re prepared to work the number of days until you can pay for the holiday you took?

OP, you need to sort this. Offer them payment plan then contact debt charities to help you plan if the payment plan is refused. It can be sorted

No. She is talking about taking the FULL years allowance. I can see what she is writing in the group chat. She thinks she is entitled to it. She also doesn't understand

So can you warn her?

Always read your contract, tedious as it may be.

That’s pretty standard to be honest . It wouldn’t be fair otherwise . If you hadn’t taken enough holidays you would have revived a pay out for them .

Why would she think she’s entitled to a full year’s holiday allowance when she’s only worked a couple of months? Honestly I don’t understand. Simple common sense should tell you both otherwise.

I really don’t think it’s up to a company to explicitly explain to every employee standard employment law that fully functioning adults should be able to understand. It’s like trying to say the company was wrong for deducting tax and NI because you thought the pay stated on your contract would be the pay you take home. Of course you have to pay back holiday taken if you’ve taken more time off than you accrued. Otherwise anyone could walk into a job, take their 4 weeks annual leave, get paid and then hand in their notice.

This happened to me, left a reasonably new job due to it just being a horrendous shit show and owed AL back. It's pretty standard practice for most companies, your AL allowance is based on the assumption that you'll be working there the full financial year.

I just contacted them and they were happy to set up a payment plan where I paid it back in installments, they might be willing to do the same for you as you're out of work.

Think you just learned a valuable lesson in reading contracts in full before signing.

Depends on the legislation- no idea what the Irish legal framework is. (Where I'm based unused leave automatically carries over until March of the following year.)

It depends whether the OP is on social welfare while searching for a new job. Some credit unions offer loans to social welfare recipients and some of the social welfare payment is paid directly to the credit union so they're guaranteed to get their money back. I think that's how it works. I don't know all the details but I know something like this exists in some credit unions.

Given that the 21 days holiday appeared on the system in Jan I think the company holiday year probably runs Jan-December so it would only be what she’s accrued from the start of the year unfortunately and nothing from 2022 would count unless there was an agreement she could carry it over.

Just a suggestion, will they allow you to work, unpaid, for the days you owe them? Assuming you'll be between jobs?

It actually is expected to be explicit. Contracts should explain the holiday accrual rate. And they should say pay is subject to statutory deductions. These are all standard clauses.

she will be 'owed' what she has earned

they will either pay it, or she can take in her notice period

with your scenario
I start a job in January, I take my 22 day (or however many) in Jan, then hand in my notice (a week) and basically get paid for 6 weeks and work 2?

see how that works? it doesnt does it

Yes you have to pay it back, that's just common sense.

The holiday is accrued throughout the year, but you need to work the year to earn it.

Best bet would be to contact HR and try to negotiate a payment plan.

Best of luck finding a new job. I know the hospitality sector in Ireland is crying out for workers right now so maybe try there.

I’m sorry you have got yourself so confused.
In fairness to you, if you have never been told something even if it is obvious to others I can kind of see where you have got mixed up.
For future reference-you earn AL, so think of it like for each month your there you earn 1.5 days for example. It is very common for people to have to pay it back if they leave mid year, and I guess even more so if you leave at the start of when your holiday year starts (not always the same as Jan-Dec, it may be March-April or even the month)
Have you considered working an extra 2 weeks of your notice? Assuming they are as short staffed as you say, they may well
jump at having you for an extra 2 weeks. I know it’s hard when you’re in a negative environment but once you know you’re going then it’s so much easier. I did 8 weeks notice last year in a truly toxic job but I just kept my head down and remembered I wasn’t going to be there much longer.

You must have accrued some leave between November to the end of February to off set the 10 days you took.

How many days pay do you owe them, can you withdraw your notice?

I genuinely didn't know. I had never heard of anyone leaving a job and having to pay annual leave back. I honestly didn't realise.
And now of course im thinking how did I not know that that system even existed.

I think I thought that annual leave would only be available to me to take , if I had built that annual leave up.

So when I logged in and saw I had 22 days to take. I somehow misunderstood that they were my days to take for this year, no matter what.

I don't know what to do for the best. Have to have a long walk and try to see the best way forward ,

Where I am it's pretty standard practice you'd have to pay back any holidays you had overused in any job, so that's likely why they've not made a point of saying. Why would they say you'll have to pay them back if you leave unless you'd mentioned you were leaving 🤔

Contact them be honest say you can't pay all at once and see what they say I would. Better than ignoring it

Well it's like everything, if you don't know, you don't know. I'm sure you feel crap about it.
I would perhaps ask the company to wait until you have another job,then offer to pay what you can afford each month.They can't get blood out of a stone. If they did go to small claims court and you'd taken responsibility and offered a payment plan, the court would take a dim view I think. Get in touch, take a bit of control over it and propose a plan.

If you could only take what you had accrued, it would lead to everyone taking all of their leave in the second half of the year which would be extremely bad for resource management.

Yes they can -that holiday entitlement is given for the year , you didn’t work enough days to accrue the holiday

They should have taken it out of your wages to begin with rather than ask you to pay it back so that’s their fault

Yes they can annual leave is accrued through the year majority of places show your full entitlement and you can use this but if you leave within the full year then what has been used and not accrued is required to be paid back
So for example if uk and entitled to 24days leave plus 8 bank holidays

The 24days is multiplied by the average hours that business works in a day so 40hr week 8hr per day meaning an entitlement of 192hr this is then divided by the the number of weeks in a year 52 giving you 3.6923 hours accrued per full working week completed
If you start 1st Jan and that is when leave is calculated from in the company some are different and go by your birthday month some by a random month (mine is october) but say it is 1st Jan this means between 1st Jan and 28tb Feb you have completed 8 and 2 days so you have 8 full weeks gaining you 29.5384 hrs plus 3days at 0.36923hr total rounded 29.91hr if 40hr week not even a full weeks holiday entitlement and you took 2 weeks so they are entitled to claim back on 40hr weeks 50.09hr holiday you took not entitled to