20 days annual leave is Dickensian

[Palacelife]

Most firms now start on 25. I think 20 just smacks of a mean firm and not a place you want to be. AIBU?

I get 20 days, plus bank holidays, plus between christmas and new year, plus two tuesdays a year after easter monday and bank holiday in august. So it works out quite well. We are not allowed to take any leave in September or October (our busiest time) and are not allowed more than 2 consecutive weeks off. Nor can we carry any over if we don't use it.

You do understand that this thread is about annual leave.

Do you know any teachers who can book annual leave when they want?

Who can say "I'm away on France for a week so I will book next week off"
That's not how teaching works.

Obviously there are professions where it is expected you work outside contracted hours. But is it official?

In teaching, it is compulsory that you work outside of contracted hours. It is not possible to do the job in their directed time - that is 1265 hours over 195 days.

Have they answered?? I’ve just seen shitty replies back to people. All I want to know is can they in theory take 365 days a year

20 days or whatever also depends on how flexibly you can use it. The job I had that was 20+8 also mandated that leave had to be taken in days or half days and there was no flexibility in start or finish time so getting to a child's assembly meant taking a half day's leave.

My most recent jobs we book leave in hours (you can book down to 15 min increments!) and, as long as the work gets done, nobody minds if you start work an hour later one day to get to a school assembly. I have 25 days leave but can use it much more flexibly which makes a difference.

But it's very very hard to distinguish that at interview/job offer stage as companies tend just to advertise the total amount of leave rather than how flexible they are.

'Looking after'- you clearly have no idea what a teacher does.

I know full well the thread title was about annual leave. Since when has that stopped us talking about other stuff on a thread?

And there are many many professions where people have to work far more than their contracted hours. In fact I am struggling to think of anyone I know in a professional job who is able to simply do their contracted hours.

Of course not. I've only ever seen it offered in

• jobs in countries where it is very easy to fire people

-jobs that are largely comission based -jobs that are very target driven

And generally all of the above applies to the "unlimited annual leave" role

Whilst I don’t think 20 days a year is the raw deal other claim it to be, I don’t think it’s the be all and end all or benefits.

For example if I were offered the following 2 jobs:

20 day annual leave + 8BH
Hybrid working
5 days parental leave
2 months paid sick pay
Unrestricted leave - eg you don’t HAVE to take annual leave between Christmas and New Year (this is a pet peeve of mine!)

25 days annual leave + 8BH
Office working only no exceptions
no parental leave
Statutory sick leave
Have to take annual leave at Christmas, and also can’t take holidays in certain months

…I’d rather have job number 1

Hardly dickensian as i dont think victorians got annual leave!
But 20 days annual leave doesnt go far if you have kids/ caring responsibilities.
I dont think of bank holidays as annual leave- this is a fairly recent thing probably due to so many people now being expected to work BHs so its added to their annual leave.
I now have 25 days AL after 5 years employment ( local authority) there was a thread on where recently where 30 days seemed to be the average amount of leave! Anything less than 25 days not including BHs is a bit rubbish imi

I work in an FE college (not a teaching role) and we get 33 days plus 12 bank/local holidays. We can also carry up to 5 days; I carried 4 this year so I'll have a total of 49 days off.

However, that has to include the period between Christmas and New Year. The college shuts down for two weeks so even if you wanted to save those days and work remotely over the festive period, it's not an option. I love my two weeks off at Christmas but I'll admit, seeing those 6 days taken away stings a little 🙈

Unlimited holiday? I've never heard of this! How does that work in practice?

I replied several times about how unlimited leave works. And I am in the UK, not a sales or commission role.

Basically you take as much leave as you want but you can't drop your responsibilities. It requires everyone to have accountability for their roles. So you don't just dump your work and decide to have a month off work whenever you fancy.

@BeagleMum1 that wasn't aimed at you it was to previous pp's saying they had only received 'shitty replies' and that these roles only exist outside UK.

The unlimited leave which isn't so unlimited after all...

Unlimited in sense of not limited to a certain number. Not unlimited in that you could take the entire year off.

Interesting thread. I have just accepted a role that is 20 days plus bank hols. Wfh min of 3 days and my hours can be flexible so if I work extra I can take more time off.
I know 20 days isn't great but the flexibility will hopefully make it work. I'm self employed at the moment so benefits such as being paid for sickness & holidays will help.

So not unlimited as such, more like 'undefined'.

But there's still a risk that people would do the minimum they could get away with and maximise their AL.

What would happen if someone decided they would take all the school holidays off? Who would do their work during that time?

They wouldn't get it signed off if it negatively affected others.

Why are people with unlimited (until fair user policy like with phones kicks in) being haunded on this thread?
Peolle can just google how it works not keep doing but Olympics at few posters for 2 days

Thanks @Normalsizedsalad , not really understanding the animosity.

My company brought in unlimited / undefined leave on the assumption that people like their jobs and the company, want to do well, are conscientious about making sure deadlines are met, and don't want to dump on other people.

It's been working well for over two years, as people don't take the piss and it's a perk we don't want to lose, which we would do if people were ridiculous about it.

That was me but I wasn’t actually referring to you - I was referring to the other poster who just kept parroting ‘it’s self explanatory’.

In your view is there a number where you’d think ‘hmm that’s taking the piss actually’?

Feels like you came up with the policy and named it😂 Damn you having something nice😂

I don’t think unlimited leave posters are getting a hard time, there’s just one (NOT @Saverage ) who just got sneery because people wanted a bit more context as to the ‘unlimited’ part.

Id love unlimited leave - I work very quickly without compromising on efficiency and can do a day’s worth of work in just a few hours. I also am happy to wake late into the night as I’m a night owl!

I seriously don't think that people, in Dickensian times, got all this leave lol 🙄

I used to work somewhere that had 25 days leave but we HAD to take 2 weeks over Christmas - a time I’m happy to work as frankly the boredom of the holidays sets in by Boxing Day - so really it was more like 3 weeks + 2 I didn’t really wanna take anyway