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 ?

It's not that you are being unreasonable, more that you don't seem to understand that short of taking her to court for damages, there is absolutely nothing you can do if an employee decides they won't work their notice.

They are leaving, the have already signed off in their head, they literally don't care, because if they did they wouldn't be leaving.

this

NHS

Short-staffed

A familiar tale! And, that’s why people are leaving the NHS.

Yes, she can take her annual leave before she goes.

From experience of these types of contracts, she's entitled to use up remaining leave. Ok, it's not ideal to come back off leave and go straight back off again, but she's not 'refusing' to work her notice period, she's using up her leave entitlement so presumably would rather do this than be paid for it. Some kind of negotiation might be possible as to the week she takes (might she agree to take it later in the notice period?) but you'll still have the same issue that your managers need to resolve of work load and not enough staff. That's not the problem of the staff member who is going.

Curious how she has another 5 days leave to come when she has already taken 2 weeks at least. Leave year only started in April and she will only have maximum 3 months entitlement if she is working all of June.

3 things:

It's normal to use your remaining leave to reduce your notice.

But

NHS notice is usually in calendar months, and 4 weeks less than that so her notice period is probably longer than she, or you, think.

However

There is absolutely nothing you can do if someone doesn't work all of, or any of, their notice. In NHS trac references there is nowhere to put anything like that, and you would be advised to not mention it in a written reference either. Infuriating though it may be it apparently "doesn't matter."

No one can address how I am expected to shoulder the extra work or break it to my remaining staff who will have to cover for weeks though.

I thought you said it was five days not weeks? It really isn't her problem how you staff the department after her notice period ends.

If her taking leave in these weeks will leave you genuinely unable to operate, and if you are 100% convinced that you would have said no if she had requested the leave when she wasn't leaving, then I think you are fine to say no so long as you explain it to her. You are being professional and you can only hope that she will be too.

If you would normally have said yes, but you are annoyed because she is leaving and you want to get as much work out of her as possible before she goes then you are not being professional, and you cannot expect her to be either.

Wow. That wonderful chrystal ball of yours is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

I’m looking to leave the NHS - I have 30 years’ service this month. Do you know why? The workload has increased year on year, the regulatory bodies have created a load of work and they never take on extra staff to create extra capacity for this. NHS staff are taken advantage of all the time. My own workload is that of at least 2 people - I’m top of band 7. We have lost staff and they haven’t been replaced. When women go on maternity leave, they aren’t covered for the year. The remaining staff end up with work dumped on them by incompetent management. Then staff go off on long term sick and the remaining staff are dumped on again. It is unacceptable for the NHS to continue to treat people like this.

I am regularly working from home, on my days off, to cope with the rising demands of my job. I am doing the work of others, on top of my own, as they are covering the work of someone else and so on.

We are never thanked.

Who is at fault in your workplace?

Just be pragmatic. Whats the benefit in having an employee there who is checked out and angry?

you won't gain any productivity by insisting on them working their notice.

My old manager tried to heap loads of stuff on my in my notice period so I just went to the GP and they signed me off sick for the entire period till my new job started

It’s quite normal (though undesirable) in a big organisation for recruitment to take a while. If someone is so important the team can’t cope without them they should have a longer notice period.

5 days off will make no difference at all to the team, it will be the weeks afterwards whilst waiting for the replacement to start that will be the issue which is not the leavers problem.

No NHS trust can advertise, recruit, get DBS and references, new employee to give notice, complete mandatory training etc in 4 weeks, in my experience it can take months chasing things up, declining 5 days off in notice period is just poor reactive management

Stop moaning about whatever job it is you do. That's not your employees problem. If course you let them shorten their notice. Honestly the drama

NHS veteran here...it runs on the goodwill and self sacrifice of staff ..though this is changing and people are no longer willing to destroy their health. Lack of breaks, long shifts, night shifts proven to damage health, inhuman environments e.g. too hot, unventilated, constant artificial light, paying to park at work if you can park at work. inadequate equipment, over crowding and moral injury of trying to be positive for patients. Harm after harm. The Old Guard for whom the NHS was a belief system are leaving, ill or ageing out.
No respect = no service 😔💙 Junior Drs alienated. Prepare for worse when all the foreign staff leave as a result of the hostile environment being created for them. That would collapse the NHS 😔💙

If she takes sick leave during her notice period, some contracts may have a clause about only paying SSP and not for the first 3 days. It stops people going off sick during notice.

I am familiar with this. There is much within the NHS that could be improved but unless they are willing to embrace that idea then it will struggle to change and do anything differently. And ultimately suffer in the long term.
I want it to survive. It really will not if it carries on with the view that nothing can be improved or it is all too hard and difficult.
But improving something basic like recruitment might be a good start.

I think it is the intransigence. It will be a Reform government that sees the end of it. It will be the political posturing that ends it. Which is a very real prospect.
I don’t want it to end.

I’ve seen a lot of NHS staff resign and immediately go on sick, never to be seen again.

I nearly got shafted by a company I gave notice to - assured me they'd pay for leave days accured if I worked till end of notice - then suddenly changed their minds and expected me to work for free essentially and only just before hoilday days would be lost.

I took the days - left in bit of a rush and found I couldn't move the moving plans forward . So now I'd likely take the hoilday not the promise of money that may be a fight to get hold of.

GFrankly it's five days - and I doubt the NHS will be able to recruit even if they have an extra week - while it sucks for those left it's not her reponsiblity.

Me neither.

Tough innit, you can't force someone to work, she has 4 weeks notice and a weeks holiday due, so she works 3 weeks and has one week paid leave.

The rest of you have to pull the proverbial finger out and cover the slack, that's how the world works.

If your NHS, our annual leave has only just started from April, if she's taken 2 weeks already and then requesting more during notice period, surely she won't have accrued that much and will end up oweing money back which will be deducted from her last salary?

What happens if she is off sick?