Annual leave

[Clohow]

Hi, I have been offered a role which is perfect except the annual leave. I was told that I’d have 28 days leave, that the office closes for two weeks over Christmas, I’d have to use 10 days for that and have 18 days annual leave left for the year.

How do I politely broach this or do I accept and go with it?

Yes this could be a plus side. Take more winter holidays rather than summer holidays, and just plan your year around it.
Or see if you can work from home between Christmas and New year if its a suitable role for that?

Agree with this

I wouldn’t be taking that job as those terms and conditions seem crap to me.
i get 34 days plus bank holidays plus 3 days of shut down between Christmas and new year which doesn’t come out of our annual leave allowance.
I mean it totally depends on what works for you but what you’re being offered wouldn’t work for me.

Your employer is legally allowed to assign all your annual leave.

Booking time off
The general notice period for taking leave is at least twice as long as the amount of leave a worker wants to take, plus 1 day. For example, a worker would give 3 days’ notice for 1 day’s leave.

An employer can refuse a leave request or cancel leave but they must give as much notice as the amount of leave requested, plus 1 day. For example, an employer would give 11 days’ notice if the worker asked for 10 days’ leave.

If the contract says something different about the notice a worker or employer should give, what’s in the contract will apply.

.................................

When leave can and cannot be taken
Employers can:

tell their staff to take leave, for example bank holidays or Christmas
restrict when leave can be taken, for example at certain busy periods

https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights/booking-time-off

What do you do?

If you added even 10 minutes more commute to a different job a year that's nearly 40 hours in travel time a year. Or another week annual leave. There's a lot to be said for adding up pros against cons...

Just an office job!

I always take two weeks at Christmas as my DH has this set up at his work - we were married on the 28th so it allows us to have a holiday between festivities

This might make me sound a bit stupid, I’m a public sector worker so I’m just totally ignorant of private sector (which I assume this is) is this the norm?

It seems crazy to me that an office, or any business in general, can choose to close for a period of time over Christmas but make their employees take annual leave, surely if the office is closed then it’s closed? You’re not really taking annual leave because the option to work isn’t there in the first place.
Wouldn’t you only need to use annual leave if the office was business as usual but you were choosing to take time off over Christmas?

That's not great that they're forcing you to take leave when you might not wish to. I've heard of companies closing for the period in between and asking staff to use 3 days to cover the non bank holidays in that period but I think 10 days is excessive!

It's completely legal and standard for many businesses; it's just how the business chooses to do it e.g. construction, it's typically 2 full weeks, so 10 days of A/L over Christmas, factories often stipulate a total shutdown to facilitate maintenance and leave - JCB close for 2-3 weeks in July/August.

Employees are entitled to their holiday but don't have the right to choose when to take it hence the holiday 'request' phraseology; as long as the employer gives sufficient notice (more than double the number of holiday days to be taken) the employer could stipulate when every one of the 28 days is taken.

It's perfectly legal. Your employer can decide when you take all of your leave if they want to.

My first job (admittedly 30 years ago) the factory closed for 2 weeks in the summer and 2 weeks over Christmas. Everyone that worked there was made to take those 4 weeks as holiday.

Another 5 days were bank holidays which everyone had to take off, and we all had 3 "floating days" which we could take as leave when we wanted.

But most people working in construction are sub contractors so don't get any paid leave or other employment benefits.

Most factory workers work shifts and tend to work a compressed hours rolling shift pattern that factors in their annual leave, which is almost certainly well above the legal minimum (the highest I've heard of is 10 weeks in 5 x 2 week blocks).

Neither of this applies to the job the OP has been offered, which sounds like it's a PA/office manager for a professional who works for themselves and takes 2 weeks off at Christmas.

She can only try and negotiate but decide whether the other benefits outweigh the limited and restricted amount of leave, which she needs to decide whether or not is a deal breaker.

Perfectly normal in NZ and Aus where most office based jobs close for the summer break. Usually 23rd December until around 15th Jan.

We have no choice but to use 11/12 days of holiday from our allowance. I hate it because DH has to work (retail) and EVERYONE is on holiday then so kids and families everywhere so I spend it alone. Being childfree i’d much prefer to work then but it falls on deaf ears ‘oh enjoy some time off work’. No! I want to do it when I choose! It’s quite legal unfortunately.

25 as far I know. Loads of places do 25 days only.

I'm really curious, in what context is 20 days + bank holidays cushy? I've never had less than 25 days + bank holidays (currently 30) and definitely wouldn't accept a job with just 20 + bank holidays. That's the legal minimum!

28 is the legal minimum including bank holidays, when places say 25 they aren't including bank holidays.

I expect if you're the only member of staff that might make negotiations harder.
Using the christmas shutdown to take 10 days of your holiday means you'll have less time off during the year so less time leaving the employer to run things on their own. I'm actually surprised you aren't forced to take a fortnight in the summer on set dates too. That would leave you 3 days to book freely. All perfectly legal.

@Jk987 28 days is the legal minimum but it can include all bank holidays so 8 bank holidays plus 20 days. It is perfectly legal for your employer to have rules when it can and can't be taken

That annual leave policy is entirely legal though it is the absolute rock-bottom minimim legal requirement. That signals to you that they will be a shit employer in numerous other ways. They are obliged to treat all employees fairly so would be unlikely to give you more generous terms than their other employees, but if you decide not to take the job do tell them it's because the shittiness of their package of benefits including Annual Leave demonstrates the contempt in which they hold their employees and your self-respect doesn't allow you to consent to be treated like that.

It would be possible - if they really want you- to negotiate an effective increase as follows:

In a year there are 261 weekdays. Less 28 Annual Leave days means 233 working days a year under their normal Ts&Cs - your desire is to have 223 working days a year but they can't agree that as additional Annual Leave without doing the same for everyone. So instead you negotiate a pay rate which at headline is 4.5% higher than what they actually want to pay you, alongside an agreement that as a flexible working arrangement you will be allowed an additional 2 weeks of unpaid leave each year, which will take your salary back to the original amount when the unpaid time is docked. A company would only agree to such a deal if your skills are exceptionally rare and critically important to the business.

Sorry I wrote the above without having read that you'll be the sole employee.

Much easier then. Just say "I need better Terms & Conditions than that. My minimum requirement is 38 days of annual leave including bank holidays and Christmas shut down"

It's fine to walk away if that isn't agreed.

Office is closing 19 Dec - 5 January

I’ll ask about unpaid days off before I go further

You could start by asking if more paid leave is possible. Then talk about unpaid if they won't grant more paid leave.

You should probably ask about how other holidays will work - will you be expected to coincide with your employer's other holidays for example. Are there busy times of year where you won't be able to take leave?

It depends how much they want you and if they have an alternative prospective employee, also their experience of recruitment and retention plus how rational they are. Even if they've struggled to recruit and retain staff, doesn't necessarily mean they'll do anything sensible about improving things.

But it doesn't cost them anything to provide more paid leave, it just means you have less time in the working year to do the work that needs to be done. You could overcome this by working slightly longer hours on the days you do work, or being more efficient, there's probably some slack in most office jobs and it could be possible to gain back an extra 5 days over the year by eliminating unnecessary tasks or streamlining anything that is clunky.

Or it could be that there's too much work for one employee and they really need more, you won't know unless you actually do the job.

That's rubbish, I got 30 days plus 10.5 days bank holidays when I finished work 15 years ago. Can you work flexible time & build up time for extra days off?

If you have kids & need to take time off for school holidays & things like school plays or sports days you will really struggle.

Pretty common. If you like the job this wouldn't be a deal breaker for me.