Employee booked holiday to Greece without permission

[Dailystuck71]

Not sure what happens here as other staff have holidays booked. If employee had asked her request would have been declined.

In which case her request should be declined & she needs to cancel the holiday.

From the CAB website

The employee would normally need to ask to book holiday as to not clash with others. The employer is probably perfectly within their rights to decline her the time off

Decline her request. She shouldn’t have booked it til she knew the leave was approved.

It should all be written into her contract, you should always ask before booking

Thanks. Two staff members are already off with leave confirmed. Thanks again.

Hopefully she won’t have put too large and deposit down and will be able to change the dates. I just hope she doesn’t have a ‘I’ve booked it now I’ll have to go’ mentality. Good luck OP.

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Decline it. It sounds harsh but it is not your problem. They should have requested the leave, they didn't' other people applied for leave and it was granted. You need to be consistent otherwise people will book and apply later.

I have no idea about UK employment law but do make it clear that of she is "sick" that week you will expect her to attend a company booked gp that week.

If you turn it down be prepared for the employee to go off sick when the time for the 'cancelled' holiday comes around.

And be sure you haven't contributed to the issue. My boss is happy for me to take holiday when I need it (assuming no big events/deadlines already known about). However, he NEVER gets round to approving my leave before it happens. If I waited for approval I'd never go away ever. So I book and go.

I’ve seen a few go off sick then come back with a tan that they’ve got ‘from the garden’ as was so sick had to get some air.

If you turn it down be prepared for the employee to go off sick when the time for the 'cancelled' holiday comes around

Be prepared to check for holiday snaps on Facebook. The type of person prepared to lie about being off sick, letting down colleagues and losing credibility with line management, is also likely to be stupid enough to post daft things on social media and not bother to have security settings on.

You can decline the leave, certainly. And if the individual then goes off sick during that period, you can ask for appropriate evidence to be provided. The employee is completely in the wrong here, and if they lose a deposit on the holiday, then it's their own stupid fault.

However, if I were the manager in this situation, I would be considering whether the employee in question was generally a good worker or just a piss-taker in general. If a piss-taker, then I would not hesitate to decline the request, but if he/she was generally a good employee and this was just a one-off stupid mistake, I would consider long and hard whether there might be some way of accommodating the request without detriment to other staff. I would certainly make it very clear that the employee should have asked first, but if I could somehow find a way of working around it for a good member of staff, I would.

In fact, that's exactly what I did for one employee a few years ago, who had stupidly booked without checking (she had assumed that the time in question would be ok) and had paid for the entire holiday already. She fully recognised that she had been wrong to book without asking, and really appreciated the fact that we managed to find a way of working around it. It was very inconvenient at the time, but that employee will now go over and above in order to be flexible when we need her to be, and to help cover leave for other colleagues. In my experience, a little goodwill in the workplace goes a very long way.