Holiday Pay in New Employment

[Dontknow12]

I am starting a new job on Wednesday and have a holiday booked for a few weeks in May. They are fine with this but I am wondering if I will get paid for my holidays. My contract says something about if I leave and have taken more than I have accrued I will have to pay them back (which is fine) but that leads me to believe that I will be paid. Obviously I don't want to ask on my first day but I nee to know so I can budget. Does anyone have any experience of this?

You should be allocated a prorata amount of paid annual leave which you can take upfront of accruing it. If you left after say 3 months you would have only been entitled to 3/12 of the annual amount but that is likely to be more than a week anyway.

You should be paid (and most employers will pay you) but I know a fair few employers who wouldn't pay and would get themselves into a knot about things later in the year when they realise that according to the letter of the law they can't pay you in lieu of the accrued in taken holiday & might have to give you even more time off so as to be able to pay you. If they say they are not paying you, just ask them how they do propose to manage your hols this year.

By the sounds of the contract they will pay you but take it off you if you leave and haven't accrued enough holidays at the point of you leaving. Either that or they'll pay you what you have accrued up to the point you go on holiday, but that's messy so they will more than likely go with the former.

Thanks everyone. I was really hoping that they would pay but I guess I need to ask once I've been there for a couple of weeks. If they do pay then I won't have to budget as much and will be able to spend money on holidays :)

If you were an employee of mine then you'd be paid for it. Once someone new starts than I calculate how much they are entitled to from their starting point in the year and it is awarded to them to use as and when they like, rather than needing to accrue it first.

We would pro rate the holiday for the balance of the holiday year, and pay up to that amount, the rest would be unpaid

In this situation, where you are only going to have 5/6 weeks of work (and therefore only 5/6 weeks accrued holiday), most companies I work with wouldn't pay. The reason is that you will be taking way more than they would be able to claw back if you were to leave at - say 3 months service.

Another reason would be well-being ; the employer may not want someone to use a chunk of paid leave at the start of employment and then have a long wait before they would be able to take any more.

The only way you'll know is to ask.