Accrued holidays

[SantaBeckett]

We took on some new staff on Dec 1st (this year )
Our annual leave runs Jan -Dec
We can not carry holidays over or get paid in lieu for them .
This part of the company will be shut on Christmas day and Boxing day.
We are expected to save enough days holiday to cover shutdown periods .
With all this in mind I have one member of staff insisting they are allowed to book a days holiday . ( not Xmas or Box'day)

Firstly disregarding the fact that its christmas could some one that is new book a day off before they have worked a full month and so not accrued the time ? I know that a lot of employers work on trust that you will come back to work and so 'earn' the day off but I am not sure that I do trust him that much yet .

Second , because it is Christmas he will ( I think ) have to use his one day holiday on christmas day and have to be unpaid on boxing day even though it is not accrued .
I can see him kicking up a stink about not getting paid for one of his days off , is there anything he / I can do about this ?

Next year he will have to take NYD off again because the site is closed , and again he has not accrued it so would this be unpaid or would we have to go on trust that he will be there until at least the end of Jan and pay him for it ?

And advice would be much appreciated, I will be getting in touch with our HR on monday but I am likely to be working with him before I can get a answer form them . ( we start at 6 am )

I am now fed up of writing the work accrued

One month's leave allocation should be approx 3 days including bh, assuming ft and on 22 days plus bh. Whether you can take holiday in first month depends on company policy but it would seem churlish to otherwise make a new employee lose theirs.

What arrangement is in place for bank holidays?

Sorry I should of said , we get 28 days AL this includes BH , This department shuts down on BHs so there are 8 fixed days and 20 days that can be taken at anytime ,
They are employed part time ( 10 hrs pw )

Working it out using our holiday calculator gives him 4hrs & 26mins holiday accrued from 1-31st Dec based on working 10 hours a week - if your holiday year ends 31st Dec he won't be able to accrue anymore than this so this is what he should be paid for the Christmas/Boxing Day holidays ie his regular pay for the hours he's worked plus 4hrs & 26mins holiday pay.

The January 1st holiday would usually be granted on a goodwill basis given that he'll have accrued the relevant number of hours fairly quickly in January.

If he is paid for BH then he will get two paid for Xmas day and Bday. You are arguing over 1 day that needs paying in December or being carried over to the next year. You can't have it both ways.

He will accrue another BH on the Ist hardly likely to do a runner.

As I said all staff are expected to save enough days of annual leave to cover any shut down time so in this case its BHs other sites shut down for a week at a time because they do not shut on BHs .
The staff get paid their AL pay during any shut down , however if they have used ( or pre booked ) all their AL they do not get paid during shut down.

@NatashaAlianovaRomanova
Can you book part days off ? I wish we could If I have to be somewhere ( docs ,dentist , Gas checks etc ) I have to book a full day off even though in reality I would only have to come in a hr late or leave a hr early .
@cabbagekingHe would only get paid holiday pay for BH if he had accrued enough holidays .
It is the same for everyone although some is done on trust , IE if someone wanted to take a month off in feb they would only get the pay they have accrued which would be about 3/ 4 days depending on their shift .

So nobody gets paid for having 1st Jan off so most of us work it

You mean because your holiday year starts on 1st Jan, no one can have accrued that holiday yet so won't get paid? That doesn't sound right/legal to me. Are you permanent employees?

A starter on 1st Dec will accrue 2.33 days to the end of December to include bank holidays. That means if they're taking Christmas and Boxing Day they've only got 0.33 days available.

In our company if they took the whole day they'd get 2/3 of the day unpaid.

There's no arguing with the maths and the method of calculation should be in his contract so he doesn't really have cause to complain IMO.

@SantaBeckett I have flexible working so can do doctors/dentist etc without taking annual leave but no one else in my company has a flexible working agreement so they have to take a full days annual leave as that's what their contracts say.

But for something like the situation you describe we'd pay the accrued holiday in the December pay but the employee would take the shutdown days off - so say the employee does 2x5hr days pw & his working days were Wed & Thurs he'd take the 10hrs off on Xmas & Boxing Day but he'd only be paid for 4hrs & 26mins holiday (not in office so can't check how many decimal points 26mins converts to - roughly .40) so at £10ph he's get paid £44 holiday pay (4.4x10) as opposed to the £100 he'd be paid if he had accrued the full 10hrs holiday entitlement he needs.

Does your payroll software not have an option to calculate the holiday entitlement accrued based on hours worked?

If you wish to hold on to good staff you need fair working practises.

Refusing a person a day which they can only book in December would be an unfair and likely give rise to a reasonable grievance.

@Ronia yep thats right , we are all permanent and a mixture of full and part time I have questioned the whole new yr day thing before , I was told its because we get paid on the 4th of each month so the company could not be able to take the money back from us if we chose to leave / not come back after NYD . (who would walk out of a job on Jan 2nd ? [confussed] ) however as the year goes on they do allow us to take unaccrued hols cos they trust us then !

@NatashaAlianovaRomanova I wish we could work flex time but we are contracted to another company that wants exact hours completing each day .
Your description makes sense (thank you ) this kind of thing tends to baffle me a bit.
I am not sure exactly how our payrole is calculated as I am not based office based so I never get to see the ins and outs of it.
A lot of us got TUPE'd over last year so we ended up with hols been all over the show due to the incompetence of the company we came from so we did not have the same situation this NY .
My annual leave record showed that I had take 10 days holiday and I was still owed 32 days , we only get 28 days !

If you have to have accrued your holidays before you take them, what happens if someone wants a two week holiday early in the holiday year?

If someone leaves having taken more holiday than accrued it is often deducted from final pay. AL allowance is normally rounded up.

By this accrual system they wouldn't be able to take a 2 week holiday until the end of May @Parker231 and they wouldn't be able to any days off before that!

@SantaBeckett so does no one get paid for the 1st of January due to this moronic accrual system? Are there any other policies which have been thought up by someone who has no clue about how to treat staff like human beings?

That's extraordinary and I really would question if it's legal. One to run by ACAS?

Its nuts isnt it ,
I have been going through my contract and company policy book ( god what a sodding complicated heap of drivel )

It says roughly " all staff must complete the 1st section of their probation period, in most cases this is one month before been allowed to book any short holidays ( less than 4 days ) ." this will be granted providing nobody else in the team is off and it does not have a impact on the company

Staff after this period but during the second part if their probationary period ( normally a further two months ) may book holidays at the managers discretion , and providing it does not have a impact on the company. oddly it does not say how many days this can be
Full probation must be completed before any extended holidays ( more than 10 working days ) will be granted , they will be granted providing nobody else on the team is off at the same time , It is a first come first served basis .
Holidays for more than 11 working days will not normally be granted unless exceptional circumstances can be given .
All AL must be booked one month in advance , bookings can be made during any part of your probationary period.
Bookings can be made up to two years in advance but popular periods ( xmas , NY , Easter etc may have to be put on to a rota if if there is a high demand each year.

So from what I can gather If someone was to start on the 1st of Jan they can not have any time off in Jan but , during this month they can book a few days of in Feb . then during Feb they can book over 9 days off in April .

So it sort of makes sense , i think
But going back to my OP this means that the new staff that started on Dec 1st can not book xmas and boxing day off even though the building is shut down .
So what are they meant to do ? stand around outside for two hrs ?

This is going to be a long phone call to HR on monday !

@NatashaAlianovaRomanova
To be fair the company have been great with other things , very supportive of one member of staff whom was suffering from depression ( paid for 3 x 1 hr sessions of privet counselling to be taken when they wanted it )

Allowed me to take 5 days paid compassionate leave on the anniversary of my DHs death ,

You pay them 2 BHs and either they book a day off or it is carried over

But going back to my OP this means that the new staff that started on Dec 1st can not book xmas and boxing day off even though the building is shut down .
So what are they meant to do ? stand around outside for two hrs ?

Aa the company is on shut down for the 2 days they will take the days off - the issue is will they be paid for them?

To work that out properly we need to know how the 10hrs they work are split - is this 2x5hr days (& what 2 days they'd normally work) or is this 5x2hr days Mon-Fri? Or any other combination of days & hours?

If they work 2x5hr days & usually those are Mon/Tues then the conversation is moot as the BH's would be non-working days & they wouldn't need to take holidays or be paid for them.

@cabbageking
The rules about carrying over or paying out are very clear ( about the only thing that is )
They will not under any circumstances except termination of the staffs contract pay out any holidays,
The only time they will be carried over is if the member of staff was off sick during a previously booked holiday, and then it must be used within three months of their return.
USE THEM OR LOSE THEM is printed just like this .

@NatashaAlianovaRomanova
They would normally work 5 x 2 hrs mon -fri

@SantaBeckett then they will have accrued the required number of hours they need - 2x2hr days = 4 hours

By this accrual system they wouldn't be able to take a 2 week holiday until the end of May @Parker231 and they wouldn't be able to any days off before that!

Requiring workers to accrue holiday before they take it is perfectly legal and provided for in employment legislation, but only in the first year of employment.

OP they have accrued holiday in December, they don’t have to work a whole month. That may be the company policy but legally they accrue it from as soon as they start. If someone only works a couple of weeks and leaves they will have accrued holiday. He might not have enough to cover all the time off he wants to take though. He’ll likely have accrued enough to take a couple of days off. Even if he has overtaken slightly and doesn’t come back after Christmas it’s literally going to be a couple of hours given he only works 10 hours a week.

Sounds like a shit place to work anyway. Stressing about someone getting a couple of hours holiday over their accrual and making staff take holidays out of a statutory minimum holiday allowance or not get paid over Christmas. I know a lot of employers do this but it’s shit and leaves you with hardly any where you can actually take your holidays when you want. I’d never take a job again in a place that did that.

@CareOfPunts
OP they have accrued holiday in December, they don’t have to work a whole month. That may be the company policy but legally they accrue it from as soon as they start.
This is what I needed to know , are sure ? I am not doubting you but it would be a very useful piece of arsenal if it is def correct.

I agree it is crap of them but as I said up thread they have been great with lots of other stuff so I do not want to throw the towel in at the moment .
I guess a lot of it will boil down to what HR say on monday.