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 is too late for the colleague who wanted it to arrange the holiday that they wanted

*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*

But not all businesses can run this way - and I would imagine that somebody might be a bit put out if you cancelled leave booked at peak time that had meant that somebody else hadn't been able to book that leave.

For example, I found a cruise that was over October half term last year, I checked at work but someone else had booked the leave. No problem, that's just the luck of the draw, I had to sort something else, and it meant I missed out on the cruise as it was obviously on a set date. But if they had subsequently cancelled the leave with a week to go, I might have felt a bit put out.

At my work, hours are closely budgeted across departments, so if your department has two full time employees it has 80 hours of payroll available in any given week. But holidays and sickness don’t count towards those payroll hours (to allow you to get a temp worker in if required or offer overtime to cover holiday). Most of the time we don’t get a temp worker in to cover holidays, but we do offer the unused hours out as overtime to other teams. If the other teams had taken up those hours, you wouldn’t be allowed to cancel holiday as your department wouldn’t have any hours available for you to work.

So it’s not necessarily unreasonable for employers to want to control when you can cancel holiday. And you aren’t giving much notice either…

My workplace it is allowed but I have family members where all leave must be booked in January for the whole calendar year and no changes are permitted at all.

DH’s work brought in a policy that ‘prime’ time annual leave (school holidays, Christmas, Easter and their year end) can only be cancelled with at least 6 weeks notice. Primarily to stop people booking leave just to block the spot then not using it as that was starting to cause real bad feeling.

Non prime times you can cancel automatically with as much notice as your leave and up to last minute at manager’s discretion.

My work is actually driving me bonkers by not allowing leave to be booked very far in advance because “some people might not know what they want yet”. Why should that be the problem of those who are organised??

Most people do? Every where I’ve worked it’s been strictly prohibited to take annual leave when you’re sick, it’s cancelled and reclassified as sick leave so you still have an actual legally mandated break from work through the year.

But the OP isn’t swapping with a colleague. It’s too late for the colleague to plan leave now. That’s why they complained.

But I don't think that's what the poster meant - I'd take annual leave or Flexi for a scheduled hospital appointment for example, not sick leave.

such rigidity is weird but it seems like you were trying to nab a prime holiday slot without much consideration for your colleagues and so I understand if your manager is feeling irritated.

that said I’d be getting a very sore throat that likely develops into flu if they insist you take it as holiday

I mean, it’s a dick move by you to bags prime leave and then cancel, but you should check your contract and/or instrument you are employed under.

What??!!! No. Sick leave, emergency leave, unpaid leave. Who said don’t show up? Bizarre.

I have booked leave in the past to try to get a trip away for instance. But then say my DH couldn't get the same leave . I did say as soon as I knew that I wasn't going to take it .

Prime dates such as Easter , school summer holidays and Christmas usually are separately considered where I’ve worked so all employees get fair consideration rather than fastest finger first.

The fact that doesn’t happen and you managed to get it and now what to cancel wouldn’t go down well with me.

That’s what sick leave is for. If your employer requires you to take annual leave for a sick day then they’re breaking the law.

Some people ask to take annual leave instead of sick leave, so they get paid a full day's money instead of SSP. It's not the employer mandating it.

One of my early jobs (with a similar coverage issue as yours) had a special policy for leave dates that fell before or after a holiday closure because of incidents like this - I think it was something like a month's notice if you wanted to cancel pre-booked leave on those days.

Snagging some of the most valuable days of the year so no one else can use them and hanging on to them until a day or two beforehand does have a negative impact on your teammates in a setting where only one or two people can be off at a time. Not allowing last-minute cancellations is one way employers can discourage it from happening.

This is what I think. There would be a lot of grumblings and a mess if people start booking up prime holiday time in case they might want it and then can cancel short notice if they change their mind.

I've never, and don't currently, work somewhere that strict so I can't really help. Withdrawing leave is usually allowed where I work.

But she hasn’t given the colleague enough notice to do anything with it. Don’t book prime leave and then expect to cancel a few days before. It’s unfair on colleagues.

Yes, it is. And YABVU.

Employers can give you notice to take annual leave. Employees have to get the dates of leave authorised or approved. That’s the clue right there. As an employee you don’t get to decide arbitrarily when you take leave.

Bagsying holidays that everyone else wants then cancelling at the last minute is a dick move.

We had a woman like that at work. She'd book all the prime holiday weeks and then months later cancel what she didn't want. Every single year. By which point everyone else had coordinated alternative weeks with their spouses workplaces, booked weeks off nursery, and paid for flights on weeks they didn't really want to go. So so frustrating. Plenty of your colleagues would have jumped at the chance of the extra long week but you've spoiled that for them. I'm glad your Employer is taking this stance.... Maybe it'll stop you being so greedy in the future.

I agree with PPs that bagging a prime school holiday week, holding on to it until three working days before the holiday is due to start, and then saying you don't want it anyway is a recipe for pissing off working parents who have now had to pay for childcare or miss out on a holiday away with their family.

I would keep quiet, take the leave anyway and make a note to be more considerate and give people more notice in future.

I don't know, it's difficult given when it is. You booked it without knowing you wanted it just to make sure it wasn't taken, now you've decided it doesn't suit you but you've left it so late as to leave it unusable by abyonevelse