Job Share response to hol request

[Stargazer75]

I'm fairly new to my jobshare with another lady (I've been there 1 year). She's older, single and no DC.
She loves her cruises and goes on around 3 a year, I cover the days she is absent.

As yet, she hasn't booked any days off this year, but as I have a husband, grandchild, elderly Mum etc, occasionally I book things in advance as have a busy life outside of work.

The other day I asked my jobshare if she could please cover 2 days for me in September as I would like to book annual leave.

She went all red in the face and said 'I just don't know if I'll be available, I don't know when I'm going on my cruises yet'. I could tell she was very annoyed at me asking! She asked if I needed to actually book something such as travel or accommodation etc? I don't personally think its any of her business what I plan to do on annual leave and I think 7 months notice is pretty decent. In the end, in a huff, she just said 'well, you may as well go ahead and book then and I'll let you know closer to'.

My DH needs to book his annual leave to coincide - and we were hoping to visit friends in London who would also book annual leave, but obviously if she changes her mind closer to it will mess everything up 😬

I guess she's pretty much saying 'I'll cover if I don't book a cruise' in effect saying her holiday plans trump mine (unless I'm getting it wrong)

I put my holiday form in to HR, but how would you address this going forward?

I'm not just going to sit back each year, wait for her to book the days she wants, then have the crumbs that are left.

Anyone else jobshare and how do you navigate?

This is ridiculous... there is no dripping with contempt, just people trying to meet their own needs and losing sight of the bigger picture.

Absolutely not normal in my experience to cover job share's leave, very odd. I'd just put the form in and if she says she can't cover then tell her your leave was booked first.

It's totally relevant actually. OP can probably only go on holiday during school holidays whereas other lady has more options. Looks like the other lady thinks her holidays trump the OPs.

It looks like the three employees are contracted 8 days between them, which assuming it is a 7 day a week business gives them 52 days to cover each others leave. The problem comes if ordinarily they work fixed days- so in booking a week off she needs to make sure the colleague can sort out any regular weekly commitments.

Do you have to ask permission from each other before you take annual leave then? Is it verbal or written? This would annoy me

I did politely say ' I would like to book 2 days annual leave in September if convenient with you, the dates I would like are...'. This is when she got very agitated and said she didn't know as hadn't booked her cruises yet.
So, what am I supposed to do? Wait until she 'permits me'. Does she get first dibs and I have to just take the weeks she doesn't want?

@Stargazer75 tough on her! You know when you want to take off. She can book her cruises around you.

Not dripping with contempt, merely explaining our 2 different sets of circumstances.

I have to plan a little further ahead, as involves DH leave, GC, elderly Mum etc, whereas my jobshare can be a bit more spontaneous.

I'm not saying I have a fantastically full life and hers empty, just that because I do have many other factors to consider, I require booking a few months in advance.

Surely a couple of days in Autumn is enough notice to work around.

I'm not asking for prime time School holidays or the whole of Christmas, but I do prefer to book mini breaks etc in advance so I can secure a dog sitter or taking GC etc

We have 2 guys who cover each other's holidays.
They literally cannot be off at the same time.
They are good friends and talk ti each others and are very accommodating.
You are right op.
It's give and take.
Your turn ti take.
Next time she wants some time off, remind of recent conversations.

This whole arrangement of covering each other is bizarre and sounds completely unworkable to me. Lots of people are responding as if this was the usual, relatively reasonable situation of an employer asking employees not to both take holidays at the same time. But they're asking much more here.

Unless I've seriously misunderstood, this isn't just a case of one person taking holiday meaning the other person can't be on leave at the same time. It's one person being on holiday meaning that another part time person has to drop every commitment they have on their non-working days/half days and effectively go full time for the duration.

That's utterly unworkable surely? Many, many people who have part time jobs do so because they're not available to work full time. What if the job share colleague had a young child? Would they be expected to line up childcare for all their non-working days just in case? What if they care for a relative, or have another job on those days?

So OP's colleague isn't just being asked to confirm that she hasn't booked a cruise that week in September, she's being asked whether she minds dropping the class she does on a Tuesday afternoon, telling her neighbour she can't pick her child up from school on Wednesday as she normally does, telling the person whom she works for on Thursday that she won't be available that week, and warning her dog he'll just have to go hungry on Thursday as she won't be back at lunchtime after her shift as usual because she has to work all day instead!

The OP's employer seems to be missing the point of part time jobs: they're always going to attract people who can't (or at least, have good reasons not to want to) commit to working full time. This is definitely an employer problem, not a colleague problem.

Why do you have to cover each others holiday? If you were doing the work alone (full time) who would cover you then?
I job share and, yes they can ask me to cover the other person, but her holiday wouldn't be dependant on me being able to cover.

What job is so important that it can't go un-covered for even a few days? Head of security at Faslane? Jeremy Clarkson's minder?

That doesn’t sound lawful at all and if I was one of those workers, I’d be querying it.

@Stargazer75 As plenty of posters have pointed out, this isn’t how annual leave on a job share is supposed to work. Your employer is taking the piss and you’ve enabled it to happen.

Its fine to say don’t both take the SAME WEEK off but you shouldn’t be expected to cover your colleagues days when she’s on A/L.

For instance, supposing you work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and your job share colleague works Thursday and Friday then your employer shouldn’t be expecting you to come in and work on Thursday and Friday that week just because your job share colleague has annual leave.

If you take the first 3 days of the week as A/L then your colleague is still picking up the work on Thursday and Friday so the employer only needs to find cover for 3 days if the work is critical. That’s the employer’s responsibility, not yours.

Why are you only asking one of your job share colleagues though? You've implied you always have an issue asking her to cover- what about your other colleague?

Why would it not be lawful? It’s fairly common for employers to restrict how many people can be off at one time, and I believe employers are allowed to dictate when employees have time off if they want to.

We have a similar set-up in that only one person who knows how to do a particular task can be off at once (the odd day overlap is generally fine). We just check in with each other before booking - but we’re all reasonable people so it works well.

It's not that they're saying only one person can be off at a time - as you say, that's completely fine and normal.

It's that OP, being part time, has to do overtime to cover the person on leave, so effectively has to work an extra shift for every shift of annual leave she takes. That means she's not actually getting any annual leave, it's just a kind of 'shift swop' arrangement. Shift swops are fine, but they're not a replacement for annual leave.

Why would it not be lawful? It’s fairly common for employers to restrict how many people can be off at one time, and I believe employers are allowed to dictate when employees have time off if they want to.

In some organisations such as legislatures, e.g House of Commons, Scottish Parliament, depending on the part of the organisation you worked in you would be expected to only take holidays, as opposed to odd days off, during recess, regardless of whether you have children.

It's common in lots of jobs - teachers can't usually take time off in termtime, agricultural workers can't usually take holiday at harvest. (Summer holidays? Hah!) When I was working in a university, we had to take some leave at Christmas because the place shut down.

It's very usual to say at least 1 or 2 people have to be available, so if others have already booked leave, tough. There should be plans to deal with emergency situations like illness, but leave several months ahead is not unplanned. In most places, I would expect it to be first come first served, and others have to work round it. I often would ask if others had things being planned before I put in a request as I often had a bit of flexibility- but not always. And we did cover on-call 24/7 by a rota, worked across countries with different public holidays and so on, so there were various factors to consider. But it worked out with a bit of communication.

However, if a colleague asked and I had nothing booked yet, then fair enough for them to get in first, and I would just have to work round thst in my own plans. Everyone has an equal chance to book ahead, regardless of personal circumstances - chosing not to is... a choice. And choices have consequences. Having to take a holiday a week after you initially hoped to is not major.

All checked with acas. Perfectly legal. In all the job shares I've had we cover if the other is off and received overtime pay. This is my 4th job share and we have always done it this way, so pretty normal.

Her being single and childless is irrelevant. Her time off is just as important as yours.

you shouldn’t have to be covering each others time off. If you both have the same amount of days off a year holiday but then have to cover the other person for the same amount of days, you aren’t getting holiday. This isn’t a her problem this is an issue you need to raise else where.

So, what am I supposed to do? Wait until she 'permits me'. Does she get first dibs and I have to just take the weeks she doesn't want?
You say 'I understand you might need to speak with your OH. Can you confirm tomorrow you don't have already anything on at that time'. No need for drama.

So what would happen if someone applied for this sort of job share who had childcare commitments for example? People who work part time often have their reasons.

So what would happen if someone applied for this sort of job share who had childcare commitments for example?
People who work part time often have their reasons.

I wonder if it depends on the nature of part time.

For example when I worked part time with young children I had set days off each week.
Some of my friends who worked full time though in 7 day a week services had rolling shift patterns so they'd do 4 10-12 hour shifts but their days off could change.
Other people I know in childcare would find their shifts changed week to week so they'd be on early shift some Mondays but late another. They were still classed as full/part time.

If OP and her colleagues are contracted to work 0.6/0.8 with shifts to be confirmed then it might be that work can say that no more than 1 person can book leave at a time so that the others can be rota-ed to cover the office.

But I don't know how that would work given the expectation for OP sounds like it's compulsory overtime rather than their shifts reflecting business need.

I used to be part of a jobshare and this was not at all the set-up. If my partner was off sick there was no expectation at all that I would cover (and vice versa).
Maybe because it wasn't in an area where you get overtime? I can imagine it works better if you can be explicitly and clearly paid for it. But it doesn't change the fact that the people in this sort of jobshare could easily end up with no time off at all.