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 ?

If this is NHS there will be policies and protocols to follow. Stick with those.

I’ve never heard of someone in nhs not being allowed to use their annual leave before they leave

I think you’re being extremely unreasonable. I worked in local government for forty years and never had a job where I was given the option of being paid for outstanding annual leave when I left - without exception, I always had to take any leave I was owed during my notice period.

How did you cover the previous two weeks leave she had? - do that for the 5 days. If she'd accrued 3 weeks leave then she should be able to take 3 weeks leave. It's not her fault the NHS is a shit show.

Are you a clinical or corporate team?

You haven’t specified.

The fact that you’re even asking these questions on here instead of consulting senior management/SLT first gives me the impression that you’re not a very competent line manager. The NHS is absolutely full of incompetent middle management who can’t make or execute decisions.

This is two separate issues. Forgot about the notice period and apply the typical annual leave policy, what notice do people usually give for requesting annual leave and for what criteria is it usually refused eg other people already booked in, busier work period, just had annual leave etc. if she wasn't leaving would you be granting the annual leave or not?

People who have just resigned tend to adopt one of two personas. One is keen to wrap things up, do a good handover and leave on good terms, the other has checked out. In my experience you won't get much value from the checked out type. Get what knowledge you can from them and don't expect much.

Are you going to be able to recruit in the four week notice period even if she does work?

I expect she will just go sick
Given the very generous sick pay policy of the NHS
As an employer I normally want people who are leaving to be around as little as possible

Refer to the policies - this is basic stuff. Then accept that a)she'll go off anyway meaning she'll be off and getting paid, and b)you won't be able to recruit in under 4 weeks.

'Tis the way of the NHS I'm afraid.

Precisely. Anyone with passing familiarity with NHS recruitment and selection for scarce front line staff knows approval to advertise takes weeks, advertising takes weeks, interviews take weeks, and even if an offer is made then the new recruit is probably on one month's notice too.

This whole scenario is very little to do with covering work in June, and everything to do with OP's vindictiveness towards someone who has had enough.

I’m leaving my nhs job in August and I’ve been told I have to take all my AL before I leave.

That is not her fault. You will have to work without her soon enough.

Perhaps any wacky NHS recruitment processes need to change then.

Brilliant idea - how do you propose that happens given the resources available and the processes involved?

How have you extrapolated that from what the Op wrote?

OP … it’s not her problem. She’s working her notice period and part of that is accrued annual leave that she is entitled to take – that’s completely standard and common. Your workload and understaffing is your problem, not hers.

You say the team will have to cover for ‘weeks’. The annual leave means it’s one week extra. Quite frankly, if the team can’t cope with one extra week of cover that they ordinarily wouldn’t have to then you’re in horrendous shape. And it’s not her problem.

Well yes, refusing the leave is only going to kick the issue down the road by a week, it’s not her issue that the NHS has been pissing money up the walk rather than effectively running a business and having contingency plans for staff leaving, being ill, dying.

We have all had to deal with issues when someone we work with is suddenly ill! Leaves/dies it’s not unique to the NHS, most businesses run with minimum staff..

She will just call in sick if you refuse, it’s normal to be asked to take holiday during notice period.

Presumably this means she’s clinical or in a role where she’s had to work bank holidays or she wouldn’t have accrued 3 weeks of leave by June… if she’s just had 2 weeks off and still will have another 5 days to take by end of contract 🤔

Of course you can refuse

She is not responsible for your staffing problems .
As others have said, let her have it or she might very well go sick & exacerbate the problem.

Yep, this.

Irrelevant, it is likely legal...

I did exactly this when leaving my last NHS job. Took my last week as AL, which was a genuine coincidence as I’d had it booked, and a holiday abroad, for months. I hated the job and the team, they were toxic and bullies. Only doing 3 weeks notice felt like the only bit of sweet, sweet revenge I could get.

They tried hard to stop me going. They didn’t win. Even better that my work partner took my entire last working week off sick, so I never got to do a proper handover, and I was leaving 9 months into a years contract…we all knew that replacing me in that time was almost impossible in the NHS.

It was glorious.

YAB SO U

Your staffing issues are NOT her problem.

It's very normal to use annual leave allowance in a notice period, so not sure why you are so outraged about it.

I can see why she's leaving. Good luck to her, let's hope she moves on to somewhere where she is valued and not flogged to death because her employer expects their employees to bear the brunt of their lack of staffing.