New job, holidays not carried over

[yuliant123]

Hello, I joined a new company in January and planned to use my holiday entitlement for this year in August and October. But today I realised that the holiday year in my new company starts on 1st July, so I lost my 12.5 days of holiday allowance for the first 6 months. No one has ever told me that I'm about to loose these days. Any ideas what I can do now? Many thanks

Her allocation was 12.5 days (50%) because she joined 6 months in to the year.

No I realise that. I just wasn't clear if op had thought she had 12.5 or 25 days to use annually.

The op thought she had 25 days. Which she has. And she has booked. But she assumed jan to jan. This is incorrect. It is jul to jul. So she can and has booked her whole jul to jul allowance in aug and oct.

But lost the entitlement she gained from the half a holiday year she worked jan to jul.

It certainly isn't HR's job to monitor whether staff have booked all their holidays, but I would expect a line manager to keep a bit more on top of that. Apart from the non-carry-over issue, it's also not good IMO for someone to go from January to August without having taken any annual leave at all - if I were the line manager I would be encouraging the OP to take some earlier on, so the question of whether holiday could be carried over should have arisen. This manager sounds a bit absentminded, so I think it's definitely worth raising the issue and asking whether an exception could be made.

It's poor show IMO that the Holiday Year entitlement wasn't specifically highlighted - Thats what induction/on-boarding processes are for, especially as holidays are a statutory entitlement.

July - June holiday year is likely to trip people up, and it's encumbent on management/ HR to point stuff like this out to new employees. Yup "it's in the paperwork" but let's be honest, it's nice to be supported and 'shown the ropes' getting into a new role.

Hopefully they'll allow 5 days if they operate a carry-over policy, OP.

Sorry for delay- I joined the company in January, so for the first 6 months it's just 1/2 of 25 days allowance that got lost

I think this is also partly the company's issue, even if it's in the handbook they should make it very clear, I would always expect team leads and managers to be monitoring leave and ensuring we were not going to be hit by a lot of leave at the end of the year - if they had been doing that they could have poInted it out to the op.
I'd be very surprised if they don't let you carry over at least the 5 days op given the situation, but personally I would let you take more as a clear once off and to be taken as soon as practical, hopefully they will do the same.