Work won’t let me cancel leave

[centregems]

I work on a small team and only a few can be off at any one time. As soon as the holiday booking period opened in January I booked next week off as for 4 days leave you get 10 days off. Others also booked up too to the max allowed off. I don’t want that leave now as my plans have changed. My colleague is grumbling as they are saying they would have booked a holiday if they could have had the leave but I got in first. He complained to our manager who says I can’t cancel as such short notice. Is this allowed?

It’s weird to force you on a holiday you don’t want because someone else is arsey. As long as the request you make for other holiday isn’t screwing over anyone else, who cares? I’ve never worked anywhere with such rules, how bizarre.

The problem is that it would seriously piss off your colleagues. If the system is so tight and booking leave is so tricky, then manager has to stick with it. And this might discourage people from booking prime holiday time without actually wanting that time.

Pretty sure you can legally cancel any leave you want.. contact HR. However it’s a shame someone else wanted it and you haven’t given them enough notice!

Yes it's allowed. Employers don't actually need to give you any choice at all about when you have your paid leave, they could dictate the lot. You created this situation and now want to create extra work for someone redoing the schedule, reworking whatever they need to do to plan for you being off to instead make plans for a different colleague to be off, basically just so that you don't need to take the consequences for your bad decision. YABU.

In future, make your plans and bookings properly, and if you don't have a plan then leave the best Annual Leave slots for people who do know what they want to do with the time. I agree with your employers that the best way for you to learn this lesson is to make you live with the consequences now, both in terms of you having wasted the annual leave and you incurring the resentment of your colleagues.

I don't see why you shouldn't be allowed to cancel it, whether anyone else can use it is pretty irrelevant.

I imagine they can refuse yes.

Although if you were in my team I would approve (provided suitable time to swap to) but I am not sure it might depend on workload whether I would approve your colleague instead at such short notice

I think it serves you right tbh. You booked it straight away and stopped someone else having it when you obvs didn't have any firm plans, mean.

I think it makes sense if you think about it.

If you were allowed to cancel short notice, people could book up really prime periods of leave (like you have) as a sort of holding position to see how they felt later on. And then cancel without losing anything.

Thats really unfair as it basically means you’re putting back the time when you need to decide on that leave at the expense of others.

Holding on to prime periods of leave means that others like your colleague can’t book them, and as you’ve seen, missed out on the chance to go on holiday at a reasonable price.

You’ve correctly identified why this period of time was so valuable - you get ten days off at the cost of only four days leave.

You’ve still got that nice break from work, so enjoy it!

The other reason for not allowing people to cancel is that employers want people to take leave evenly throughout the year rather than all trying to get it at the end of the year, or wanting to carry it over. Then it builds up and you have people off for unworkably long periods, possibly at the same time.

That's so strange and bizarre.

So what happens if something unexpected comes up? What happens if you have a medical appointment that comes up and you need a day off or a half day to go to the hospital?

Does your workplace think that people don't get sick or have unexpected events outside of work, or what?

But that’s the point isn’t it. It might screw others over. OP took some prime holiday dates, meaning someone else couldn’t have them. She now wants to cancel. If she gets the days back, she might book some more prime dates, depriving people again.

At my work only the manager can actually go in and cancel leave, for example. To be fair I’ve never known them to actually refuse!

You can't bag the best leave so that nobody else can have it just in case you feel like taking it when the time comes......and then back out. That's really shitty.

But then her manager simply say no to the requested leave. Life isn’t straight forward, things change. I couldn’t be a petty about it.

I think this is weird, I cancel leave all the time if I'm able to arrange childcare nearer the time, and employer is always delighted! We can also only have a certain number off at the same time so we often ask each other if we really need a specific day, and people do swap if they can and no hard feelings if they can't.

I'm not sure if it's unreasonable or not, but you can certainly un-take leave in my workplace, as long as you're not trying to swap it to a time when there's not enough cover.

Don’t understand why OP and colleague can’t swap or even swap with someone who was next on the list but couldn’t get the time. That person wants the time off and OP doesn’t. Seems ridiculous to not just allow it. This rigidity is alien to me also. It’s not like the colleague won’t be able to enjoy the time off. Boss is just spiting two people and for what? I could only understand it if it left a team short or cover was needed.

I think you need to check with HR as to what the Policy is.

I suppose it would also depend on what sort of sector you work in. If it's manufacturing (continuous production) or a public facing service such as healthcare there are probably minimum staffing requirements for various departments.

If it's an office based situation they might be more flexible.

Most people wouldn’t use annual leave for emergencies or sickness.

I think it’s a bit shitty OP and probably wouldn’t be allowed where I work. Too late notice and really thoughtless towards your colleagues. I’ve also previously worked on fixed leave rotas so count myself lucky now that I’m even allowed to pick my annual leave in the first place. Best not be a dick about it.

I have annual leave next week. If I wanted to cancel it, I'd just log into Sage, select the leave and cancel it, I wouldn't need to ask anybody.

We can only have so many off at once, but nobody takes umbrage if you cancel something you'd had booked.

Your employer doesn't have to allow you to cancel leave - it may cause problems later in the year if leave is not taken when booked.

For example, I work in a small team of 10 people, our workplace is open 7 days a week, and there are quite a few days over the year when we cannot take leave due to the needs of the business. We get 30 days leave, and only one person can take leave at a time (barring emergencies/illness). It means that there's not a lot of leeway with holiday requests. While our manager tries to be flexible where he can, if someone were to book leave at a peak time and then want to cancel it, it would make it very difficult to fit it in again later in the year, and might cause problems fitting everyones leave in.

In the same vein that an employer can refuse leave without adequate notice, they can refuse cancellations with inadequate notice. Sounds pretty fair to me. That some posters can cancel at last minute with no consequence? Consider yourselves lucky.

Yep you clearly booked it so no one else could have it, and wanted to leave your options open

That sounds wild. I’ve never worked anywhere where you can’t cancel your leave!

Love that loads of people come on here and pretend that it’s totally normal not to be able to cancel your leave!

Agree it’s absolutely up to your employer but seems strange you can’t cancel it, especially as you have to book it so far in advance

unless you swapping with a colleague leaves a huge gap in an area I don’t see why they wouldn’t just agree to it

@ISpyNoPlumPie Most people wouldn’t use annual leave for emergencies or sickness.

Actually, most people do.

What's the alternative? You just don't show up or what? Sounds like a quick way to get fired.