Refusing to work notice period

[quakerapple]

A member of my team has handed in her notice today. She is required to work a 4 week notice period.
She has 5 days annual leave left and has requested to take them before she leaves, meaning she wouldnt work the full notice period.
I have refused this as we need her in, we are incredibly shortstaffed.
She will be paid the 6 days annual leave in her final pay.
We are NHS. is this unreasonable ?

She's already booked flights. So even i decline the leave, she IS refusing as she's informed me she's going.
Common consensus is clearly iabu

I understand you're probably feeling stressed by this, but there are two issues here and neither of them are the fault of the person leaving:-

1. The team is understaffed.
2. The contractual notice period is too short.

Neither of these are your fault either, but getting narky at the person leaving isn't really on.

The other viewpoint is that once somebody has put in their notice they are checked out already. They will not be s productive and there will be gaps.

They are employees, not prisoners, after all. You will have to adjust, so just get on and do that.

If you would have approved the leave under normal circumstances, then I would do so in this circumstances.

This is a bit of a dripfeed.

let her have her leave - she isn't the problem you aren't short staffed. If a manager told me i couldn't get leave i would get a dick note for all 4 weeks - fuck them.

We wouldn't have approved the leave as she has just had 2 weeks and it clashes.
Thank you for the thoughts.
I'll leave the thread now

There's a saying, people don't leave jobs they leave managers.

Your attitude makes it pretty apt in this case.

I sympathise OP, but the danger is if you don't let her have her annual leave, she may just call in sick.

I'm a GP and I often see patients who have handed in their notice and tell me they can't face working their notice period. If they tell me their mental health is suffering, I have no choice but to issue them a sick note, whether it's true or not.

At least if you let her have her annual leave, you'll have her there for 3 weeks, which is better than nothing.

It would just mean you have 3 working weeks to recruit a replacement for her role, and refusing to authorise it would make you appear petty and somewhat vexatious

You can't possibly say she's burned out from that description. She may be, but you can't know.

I was just about to write this.

OP, remember that all the other staff members are watching and will ask her about her a/l. They are all aware of what is going on.

The fact that you are short staffed is not her fault or problem.
It is pretty standard to use accrued holiday as part of your notice period.

I'm not sure why you expect someone else to advise you how to cover the additional workload, you're the manager so it's down to you to come up with a solution.

Presumably you're aware of your teams notice periods and the length of time required to recruit so this should have always been on your radar as a potential issue.

The tone of your posts suggests that you are blaming staffing issues on the employee for leaving. I would be very careful not to come across this way to your team. I can guarantee you that they won't share your views and it will not reflect well on you as the manager

A slight drip feed. Wonder why you didn’t include it in the OP 🤔.

A dick note sounds exciting!

She was "the remaining staff" until she gave in her notice - and how she was treated (such as pushback on perfectly reasonable annual leave requests) probably contributed to her decision to leave.

Really I dont think you are ! She is but I think there is much you can do

At my place taking leave would count as part of the notice period, and people would have to take it before leaving, but surely if you're NHS, there will be a policy and HR team to advise?

Because it's more outing,but several posters accused me of saying shes refused when they felt she hadn't.
She has.

This is irrelevant though surely, as clearly we are apparently unreasonable to refuse her leave according to most on the thread.

Ah what’s one fewer NHS manager

you’ll be fine

I don’t see it as relevant that she’s recently taken 2 weeks annual leave, if you at a point in the year where you have worked enough to accrue 3 weeks, then she clearly hasn’t overused her leave allowance as she has a week left. Others in the team may also have used the same or even more annual leave so far into their leave year, it doesn’t matter exactly when they did it.

One thing I would think you may be within your remit to do, is to specify which of the 4 weeks you want her to take the annual leave…if for example there is one week when you are less short-staffed, there are dates when there is expected higher workload or there are dates when you want this person to train others etc…she’s right to believe she should be able to take the leave within the notice period, but wrong to book flights without checking with you first if there are any specific weeks within that 4 week period that would be refused. If it makes no difference for a business reason which of those weeks she uses, you don’t have a reason to say no.

It seems a bit odd that you are referring to her recently having taken leave. If you for example have a team of 10 and a rule that only 3 can be off on the same days…then it surely would be just first come first served in leave requests, you wouldn’t normally be expecting a manager to refuse on the basis that you’ve recently used annual leave, if the have built up the entitlement, it’s irrelevant how they space it out.

No, it’s pretty standard to ASK but then for your employer to reach an amicable agreement.

I do understand being fed up, but when someone has already decided they're leaving, there's a limit to what influence an employer can have over them in the period between notice and end date. Forcing her to work when she's clearly unwilling isn't one of your choices. So it's more sensible to focus on what can be done to cover the now inevitable workload.

It's not an individual's problem to solve...

And you wonder why you’re “short staffed”. It would serve you right if she goes off sick.
Whats unreasonable is NHS managers like you getting a managers wage only to start a thread like this on MN. 🙄

If she isn’t burned out, and just wants a week off before her new job starts. In my workplace you are required to give four weeks notice BEFORE the start of a holiday that lasts an entire week, and eight weeks for a two week holiday. Do you have a rule like this?

So it sounds like she only gave you three weeks notice of the holiday and usually that isn’t enough.

On that basis I’d say she can have two or three days off in her last week, but very sorry since she hasn’t given adequate notice for a whole week and as you can’t cover her it wouldn’t be fair on rest of team. Remind her she doesn’t lose the holiday as remainder is paid out.