Christmas Annual Leave

[HunterHearstHelmsley]

My manager has approved my colleague and my annual leave over the Christmas period. There's the two of us and her.

She's now booked a three week holiday and says one of us will need to cancel as one of us needs to be in at all times.

Can she do this?! I don't intend on cancelling my leave and my colleague is the same.

Cheeky! In theory yes it can be cancelled with notice. Not good management though. Up to a more senior manager to determine I think.

Could you speak to your manager's manager? That seems so unfair!

Have you kept the emails/ whatever confirming you had your leave approved. Refer her to these and say No, I won't cancel my leave.

It’s shit but yes she is perfectly entitled to do this

What would happen to the workload if you and your colleague said no? What would be the impact of your department being shut for a period of time? Would anyone suffer (I'm thinking care work or the like).

Is it really true that she can do what she wants? Is there not some policy about booking leave and having it agreed or custom and practice ie what normally happens?

An employer can cancel previously approved leave provided they give adequate notice (the same notice as the length of the leave, so if you book 2 days they must give 2 days notice) and provided this does not prevent the employee taking the full statutory minimum leave for the year. So yes, she can do this. However, if there is no clear business reason and you suffer a financial loss as a result (e.g. because you've booked a holiday which you now have to cancel) you may be able to argue this is constructive dismissal unless they provide adequate compensation.

Putting aside the legalities, approving leave requests then arranging your own holiday to coincide with those requests and cancelling the employee's holiday is very poor management. "I've decided to take my holiday then" is not a good business reason for cancelling employee leave. I would refer this to your manager's manager or to HR.

Who does your manager have to have their leave approved by? Go to them and explain and provide evidence your holidays have already been approved.

Is there a policy on annual leave where you work OP? Does it say anything about cancellation of holiday already agreed?

It’s perfectly lawful if the correct notice has been given but it’s appalling management, and most places I know of where holiday gets cancelled there is a policy around what circumstances this might happen and frequently compensation for losses incurred.

surely employers can't just cancer annual leave like that ? What happens if you have a holiday booked? !

Is your manager your employer? I'm assuming not, so go over her head and speak to whoever would sort this out - this seems abuse of power and I can't imagine the business owners would condone this.

Yep

surely employers can't just cancer annual leave like that ? What happens if you have a holiday booked? !

They can. Some would pay out of pocket expenses if you'd booked something after the leave was approved.

They can cancel but must give the same notice of cancellation as the length of the leave booked, so 1 week if you have booked a weeks leave. I’ve had it happen to me and I was fuming. For me it was part of being bullied by my line manager.

I could have sworn I replied to this yesterday... There's probably a thread somewhere with my random reply!

Yes there is a policy (I know my policies inside out!) and there is no mention of cancelling approved annual leave.

I wouldn't mind so much if it was business critical.

It's a large organisation. We aren't carers or anything like that. The difficulty is that with the nature of the work, we can be quiet then suddenly manic with priority work.

That's really bad management
I think I would refuse to cancel my annual leave if my manager did this
It's her problem
Let her sort it out, don't make it easy for her