[Closed] Holiday entitlement at work - legal opinions pls...

No way is that OK

Custom and practice. These people have been working under those terms and conditions. This has become effectively a part of their contract.

Want to do this then take real legal advice and be prepared for a complex negotiation.

It doesn't matter how the days off are defined - but you cannot reduce the total number.

Legal minimum is 28

Yes they get 28 days minimum each year - normally 31. And they normally get a half day on Christmas Eve.

The custom and practice part is the bit I was concerned about - but no employee has worked for us for more than two years so surely custom and practice doesn't come into play?

Sounds perfectly fine to me and I'm sure any reasonable employee would understand and accept it.

28 including bank holidays and works shutdowns IIRC TJ

edit - too slow

The custom and practice part is the bit I was concerned about - but no employee has worked for us for more than two years so surely custom and practice doesn't come into play?

Borderline I would say.

Buy them out? offer new contracts with AL entitlement clearly shown and a small benefit elsewhere - pay rise or whatever

It sounds perfectly reasonable to me - surely most people have to take the 3 days at Christmas as holidays? Add the additional 2 days you are proposing and it looks like a very good deal.

I'd maybe sit down with them individually with them and talk it through with them before making it policy.

Sounds fine to me.

I guess it's down to how unionised the workforce is and whether there's a bunch of union representatives trying to make a name for themselves.

/Do you want to be a good employer? Retain your staff? Then giving a few days more than legal minimum is a decent way to do this. 28 days is stingy.

If my holidays were reduced by 2 or 3 days, which is what this amounts to, there'd definitely be some goodwill lost especially if there'd been no consultation.

If the company is doing well I'd wonder why they'd be prepared to risk my goodwill for the sake of a couple of days. If it was struggling I'd expect communication and consultation, ie we can't give you the 'free' days at Xmas, you can either use annual leave or take them unpaid.

Do what you can afford to do.

Sounds Ok to me, mastiles don't take this the wrong way but this is the second question I can think of that you have asked on here re employment law, don't rely on what people say on here, employment law is very complex, get a professional to advise you (I pay the Recruitment and Employment Confederation £700 a year for this privilege), not a bunch of people who think they might know.

As the business owner it's down to you to get it right and it'll be all hell to pay if you get it wrong.

Then giving a few days more than legal minimum is a decent way to do this. 28 days is stingy.

It is tough here making a living and giving time off for free isn't feasible any more.

To be honest, this was brought into stark reality at Christmas just gone - a job needed doing very urgently but we had already committed to giving our staff time off (for free, on top of their entitlement) so we had to pay freelancers to complete the work. So basically we paid twice - once for our employees to have free time off, and again for the freelancers to do the work.

None of the employees were willing to come in and help us out either.

So it made me think - why TF should we give them this free perk?

Another way to approach this would be to just open the office between Christmas and New Year. If folk didn't want to work, then they would have to take the days as annual leave. Of course the downside to this is the extra cost of opening and heating the office, and the inevitable number of shirkers who will take the opportunity to escape the outlaws for the 3 days because they 'have to work'. When in fact, they'll probably just be sat on their arses surfing the interweb and posting on random forums rather than doing any actual work.

'tis a difficult one. Another alternative would be to let folk work from home for those 3 days. You'd have to have a pretty good understanding of what folk had actually done though to make it pay.

Am ont sure on the custom and practice bit but if you want to hang on to your staff I'd be honest with them and explain what is happening and why and say any pay increase will be dependent on slight reduction in days off or work it that way - give them a choice?

negotiate and explain you may well find you reduce the leave and increase the sick rate so it saved you nothing ...thatis what happened here so they changed back and sickness improved!
People like their holidays more thna they like work.

As the business has started to grow, we are finding that giving the additional 'free' time off is getting to be unworkable and expensive.

So you could afford it hwne you were small but now youa r ebigger you cannot?
Dont understand the accounting here tbh. Surely [you can work out the cost of each employee and what you earn from them why is this now a problem with say 10 when it was not with 5?

A practice I used to work for did a similar thing, but it was pretty generous really. They changed from 20 days annual leave a year plus a free christmas shut down to giving 25 days annual leave, with the christmas shut down included within that figure.

However, everywhere I've worked since has had 22 days annual leave with the Christmas shut down included.

None of the employees were willing to come in and help us out either.

There's more broken than a potential spat about holiday entitlement then. You perhaps need to revisit your whole motivation / job design / empowerment thinking.

Sounds Ok to me, mastilles don't take this the wrong way but this is the second question I can think of that you have asked on here re employment law, don't rely on what people say on here, employment law is very complex get a professional to advise you (I pay the Recruitment and Employment Confederation £700 a year for this privilege), not a bunch of people who think they might know.

Thanks for the head's up anyway 🙂

Another way to approach this would be to just open the office between Christmas and New Year.

Join the fsb it's 150 a year and you get free legal advice...I've used it loads...

We considered that, but then at least one of 'us' (the partners in the business) would have to come in and, to be frank, we like our Christmas break too.

so you want the paid staff to do something that the partners don't want to do - and you wonder why they refused?

Your workforce are your assets - you need to treat them well. A contented workforce does more work and has greater goodwill

So you could afford it hwne you were small but now youa r ebigger you cannot?
Dont understand the accounting here tbh. Surely [you can work out the cost of each employee and what you earn from them why is this now a problem with say 10 when it was not with 5?

so you want the paid staff to do something that the partners don't want to do - and you wonder why they refused?

A contented workforce does more work and has greater goodwill

Very true - the problem is, that there are a range of things which make us contented and what works for 1 may not work for another.

imagine if your satff find out about STW !!
You need to chat with them and see waht they say and what you can negotiate with them. It is obvoiious they will not be happy but you can get away with more in the current econimic situation. Perhaps phased reduction or other sweetener??

You could trim the festive allowance by a day or two and insist that you have rota cover year-round to avoid paying for freelance work again. You could give them the holidays elsewhere in the year to keep them happy, or find out the definition for custom and practise and knock it on the head now if it is going to annoy you in future.

Haven't read all of that, but strikes me you've been pretty generous to date effectively giving an extra 3 or 4 days off over Xmas. That actually makes a standard 20 days for a starter look pretty good.

I work in a small business and we have varying amounts of leave depending on experience/ when we joined etc. The office always closes for the week between Xmas and new year and those 3 'compulsory' days come out of our overall allowance. It's pretty standard practice. If we need those 3 days for other leave, then we can always take that time unpaid.

Work up some options and speak to your staff.

amend the contracts for all new starters to reflect that they have to save 3/4 days to cover xmas. start consulting with current staff on the changes and see what happens. offer additional holidays if you want or even increase your loyalty bonus from 3 extra days to 5.

I think your idea is OK but just not the reduction in overall holiday, holiday is very valuable for employees and any cut (whether it's to official or unofficial holiday) is not going to be looked on favourably. I also think it's a bit unreasonable to expect some staff to come in at short notice over Christmas, I'm normally very flexible but had family time planned over Christmas so wouldn't have been an option for me, doesn't mean I don't care about the company I work for.

How many of your employees are 3+ years service? Personally I'd just start at 22 days and up that to 25 days after 3 years (or 5 years if lots are 3-5 years service atm) and remove any unofficial holiday entitlement

My second ever proper job (in NZ) the whole place closed for two weeks at christmas/new year. And it came out of your hols, of which you only had about 10 after statutory hols anyway. And we had quite a few non-christian staff who resented taking hols when they would rather have them at a time that meant something to them.

At least it was sunny. Your lot sound like they don't know they are alive sorry.

Your lot sound like they don't know they are alive sorry

they are not entittled to a life outside of work and quality time with their families/loved ones?

This is pretty much true for a lot of people working for the 'hated' investment banks in the city. They just think of the bonuses at the end of the year as compensation.

Your lot sound like they don't know they are alive sorry.

For those of you doubting the need for unions, thoughts like this should spell it out for you. Race to the bottom for all... 🙄

Your workforce are your assets - you need to treat them well. A contented workforce does more work and has greater goodwill

Sorry TJ but I think if that sentence read 'a [i]motivated [/i]does more work' I'd agree with you. Being content I think gets you the bare minimum. The world is full of people who are there and niether engaged nor disengaged and just happy to plod along.

None of the employees were willing to come in and help us out either.

this would concern me.

would concern me as well perhaps a we are all in it together type Osborne motivational speech perhaps with the roof down on your convertible Jag 😉
Perhpas explain that the options are this or this or this

eg reduced holidays, reduce staffing levels reduce pay anmd see what they prefer

I'm not sure how 28 days is seen as stingy? Ok, perhaps compared to say the Armed Forces 40 days and i'm guessing other parts of the public sector.

I have a similar thing - 20 days plus bank holidays plus xmas to new year period. Obviously within reason the employer can say when those statutory 20 days are taken. Can't remember if we have clauses saying the xmas period is descretionary,as we'll never be open anyway.

28 days stingy ? 😆

Not difficult to spot the public sector employees on here 🙂

sounds very reasonable to me, who wants to work at Christmas?
make sure it's legal and will actually give you a business (financial) benefit, then come up with a way of communicating it to employees in a way that makes it sound like they are getting more holiday. i.e. emphasize the additional allowance aspect
and do it in writing first (email if possible, or letter), that way your message is clear and consistent and if anyone has a grumble then you can discuss it with them personally

28 days is the legal minimum so it can hardly be said to be generous can it?

Without being negative, the "business is expanding and we need to current employees to work more hours" starts to sound like a firm I used to work for that 'expected' you not to use your full holiday entitlement each year. Soon you'll be onto unpaid overtime too....

Maybe try the line of you are going to lose this entitlement but this year we'll give you a week wages as a bonus to change contract?

28 days is the legal minimum so it can hardly be said to be generous can it?

Which is more generous.

And as a small business in tough times, we can't afford to be generous.

Ignore the 28 day minimum - given that the UK bank holidays take up 8 of those you are giving your staff 20 days of leave to take off during the year. Ignore the fact that you are giving them 'extra' days at Christmas, that is your choice as an employer.

The key point is that you are going to mandate that staff must take a number of their days leave off at Christmas. Unless this is in their T&Cs that they signed up to when joining the company, I would have thought that you don't stand a chance! To get the staff to agree to this would be a change in T&C's and would require you staff to agree to it and sign new T&C's. You could always increase the leave amount to 23 days and in the revised T&C's make it clear that the three days were to be allocated by the company on an individual basis and would allow you to have some staff covering at Christmas.

I work for a very large IT company - we were absorbed into it during the last takeover. The company has three days that is closes down for at Christmas, however this does not apply to me as my T&C's are from my previous company.

(I am NOT an HR specialist or legal type person and as such any comments I make here are my understanding only. You are advised to get proper advice.

[i]I'm not sure how 28 days is seen as stingy?[/i]

28 is the legal minimum, so can't really be classed as generous 🙂
Though if it's 28 days + bank holidays then no, not stingy.

/Do you want to be a good employer? Retain your staff? Then giving a few days more than legal minimum is a decent way to do this. 28 days is stingy.

Agree with TJ and others here. How much work gets done for 3 days over Christmas anyway - F all in our experience. I cannot believe any business will notice that on the bottom line - and I speak from experience running a business with currently half a dozen employees. Give staff a bit leeway and 9 times out of 10 you will be repaid with loyalty and being able to call on favours etc when extra hands are needed on deck. Give it to them tight over Christmas and when you put the call out for someone to work after hours/weekend or something you're liable to get 2 fingers in return! As they, likewise, will be tempted to stick to their "legal minimum".

What goes around comes around IMO.

It used to be 20 days and if you had 28 days it was generous. Therefore just because its now the minimum its a generous minimum 😀

I don't think some of you are actually reading the proposal properly.

Give staff a bit leeway and 9 times out of 10 you will be repaid with loyalty and being able to call on favours etc when extra hands are needed on deck.

Except Christmas when you ask people to help out (during their "free" days off) and they all refuse of course 🙂

whether there's a bunch of union representatives trying to make a name for themselves.

Erm, it's not the 1970s you know. It doesn't really work like that now. Union reps are more likely to be trying to support their colleagues in redundancy negotiations.

MF - Have you approached any of the staff about this? Do they have any collective representation? This is a situation where the employer would probably benefit from the existence of a union chapel.

So you wont open the office over christmas, but this christmas you needed work completed and had to get freelanceers to do it. Not sure how cutting staff holidays is going to help you here?

I dont see why your worried what your staff will think if they dont hang round for more than 2 years anyway.

You are a walking disaster as an employer. First thinking of sacking someone because they old you they may want to move on, then trying to cut holidays that you have set a precedent of by giving it to the employees previously. I'll assume none of your employees have contracts or at least any that legally binding.
I urge you to seek professional legal advice before you really screw up an get brought up on breach of contract or unfair dismissal. Any employment solictor will have a field day with you.
If you speak to your accountant about fee protection insurance which costs a couple of £hundred they have free advice lines on taxation and employment. Keep going in your current direction and your business will be short lived.

TBH I said this in the other post about the guy who "might be leaving"- your business obviously has big problems and you're fiddling while Rome burns. In that case, you couldn't afford to lose him so you wanted to fire him, and you never seemed to think "What if someone else leaves, what do I do then?".

In this case, you can't afford the holidays but you can afford to pay freelancers to cover a gap. You're getting yourself into messes and then turning to other people to pay the price of fixing it rather than looking at the problems. You obviously have a habit of overcommitting or under-resourcing, and even if you change the holidays you're just going to do the exact same thing again with your fractionally higher resources. Get some professional help, and I don't mean employment lawyers. Get to the root.

geoffj - Member
"Very true - the problem is, that there are a range of things which make us contented and what works for 1 may not work for another."

True this- but what makes people contented when you give it to them, is not the same as what makes people discontented when you take it away (ie, giving everyone an extra day's holiday will make some staff very happy, some less so... But taking away a day's holiday will make almost all staff less happy)

A lot of employers struggle with this but it's pretty well proven, in fact if you take away a privilege that most employees didn't know they had, they'll still be pissed off to lose it.

Or join FSB and get free (decent) legal advice.

You have to look at this 'in the round' I think, rather than just take holiday entitlement in isolation - people talking about whether you're a 'generous' employer or not, or if your staff are 'content and motivated' need to consider other aspects beyond the bare stats of x number of days annual leave.

So, things like whether you offer maternity/paternity/sickness pay above the statutory mimimum, flexi-time for those employees who have kids so they can drop them off/pick them from school, letting staff work from home if they have sick children etc, might all be other important considerations for your staff, beyond just holiday entitlements.

I'm about to switch jobs from one where I have fixed holidays, albiet with 5 or 6 floating.

The new position comes with additional days, all of which are flexible.

It's a big draw...

Any employment solictor will have a field day with you

Certainly are Junkyard. I have all your posts saved. You had better pay me a "consultancy fee"

I dont see why your worried what your staff will think if they dont hang round for more than 2 years anyway.

First thinking of sacking someone because they old you they may want to move on

Get some professional help, and I don't mean employment lawyers. Get to the root.

Can I make this clear - we are a small business and are new to all this. We try to be fair, but fairness is a two-way street. If I felt an employee has done something above and beyond, I will go out of my way to say thank you in whatever way I can. Similarly, if I think someone is taking the Michael, then I am sure to look at it dimly. After all, it is a job to them, it is my life, my business. I gave up a very secure job (13 years in the same place) and went out on a limb and took a massive risk.

We always have several events every year such as night's out doing ghost walks and going for meals, days out of the office doing something like gorge scrambling, zip wires, absailing etc, we take staff out for meals *most* Friday lunchtimes, we often treat them to bacon butties etc, at Christmas we pay for a night out + hotel costs etc.

None of that makes the slightest difference legally. Get advice now and start to act professionally. Business first and friendship second.

geoffj - Member
"Very true - the problem is, that there are a range of things which make us contented and what works for 1 may not work for another."

True this- but what makes people contented when you give it to them, is not the same as what makes people discontented when you take it away (ie, giving everyone an extra day's holiday will make some staff very happy, some less so... But taking away a day's holiday will make almost all staff less happy)

A lot of employers struggle with this but it's pretty well proven, in fact if you take away a privilege that most employees didn't know they had, they'll still be pissed off to lose it.

[url= http://www.businessballs.com/herzberg.htm ]Herzberg and his pesky hygiene factors![/url]

I'm glad I didn't reference that, I was going to say it was Minzberg 😳 Min, Her, what's the difference eh.

Business first and friendship second.

28 days is stingy.

You wouldn't say that if you ran a small business and tried to work things round holidays it can be a real pita

Mastiles

E mail me off line. I should be able to help (wearing HR hat) and can also point you in the direction of a couple of excellent employment lawyers.

Cheers

Sanny

Many thanks Sanny - will try to email tomorrow but away most of the day doing (free) tutoring at our local art college.

See - I really am not all bad evil nasty employer.

Certainly are Junkyard. I have all your posts saved. You had better pay me a "consultancy fee"

We always have several events every year such as night's out doing ghost walks and going for meals, days out of the office doing something like gorge scrambling, zip wires, absailing etc, we take staff out for meals *most* Friday lunchtimes, we often treat them to bacon butties etc, at Christmas we pay for a night out + hotel costs etc.

Cut out the fripperies and let them keep their personal time off. Most people would rather have time with their loved ones than their colleagues. If you keep that guff and kick them in the nuts over time off, then you are focused on the wrong things. Like asking legal advice on STW when you should be working as hard as your staff.

Harsh tootall - you have no idea how hard I work really now do you?

After reading through this post finding lots of similarities to where I work I think what you want to do is perfectly reasonable my entitlement is the same as you are proposing. If anyone of your staff want to leave let me know I could do with a change.

I tend to agree with too tall. I'd much rather have 3 days holiday than the things you list. For example I would never go on a Christmas night out that involved a hotel stay even if paid for and that must cost similar to a day off.

How many of them do you realistically need in over Christmas? Is it to do actual work or just in case work comes up?

Why not offer an on-call allowance or critical payments paid if someone is needed during the company's downtime? Or perhaps keep the existing holiday arrangements but offer lieu days to people who offer to work them? Surely you're not running at full capacity all the time so can schedule lieu days when your business is quieter.

Personally I got bored over Christmas this year, first time off in ages for the whole time and it was rubbish. Days spent doing not much - have you asked your employees what their views are?

Could you afford to lose a number of your staff if you drop their benefit levels?

Agreed. I see enough of my colleagues at work...wouldn't want to go to any silly team bonding nonsense. If you must though, thake them mountain biking....you used to do it remember! You were actually alright at it too! 😉

I'm sure MF paid more for his contractors than the cost of a hotel. We've got our annual hotel thing this weekend, not that keen really.

Anyway, in these troubled times all staff are making all sorts of compromises, I believe CSC staff have been asked to take 5 days off before April though will be given a bonus day off if they do.

28 days is the legal minimum so it can hardly be said to be generous can it?

Has it been mentioned that [u]this can INCLUDE the 8 bank holidays and public holidays[/u] so 28 days sounds remarkably generous to me if they're additional too. Here it's 21 days starting allowance, rising by 1 day for every year you've worked for the company to a maximum of 25 days.

Can't say I've ever felt short-changed either.

If you are reducing your employees holiday entitlement (which you are) you are changing their contracts. Contracts are not only what is written down they also include what happens in practice so if for two years you have been giving extra hols at christmas I would argue that those hols have become contractual.
There are only two ways you can legally change contracts. You do it either by consent or by imposing the change. Consent is always the best route. It involves talking to staff, explaining way the change is needed and getting them to sign up to the change. Imposition is necessary if employees don't agree to the change. You still have to explain why the change is necessary, listen to what your employees say, look at alternatives but if there are genuine business reasons for the change and you have consulted effectively with your staff you can impose the change. The requires that you terminate their current contracts and issue new ones with the new holiday entitlement.

That's the strict legal interpretation and would protect you form any legal challenge in the courts. If you are small business with few employees you may chose to take a punt and do it differently but would leave yourself open to challenge by doing so.

Here endeth the first lesson.

TBH, I don't think what your doing is unreasonable in any way. Every employer I have worked for operates a system where they block out 3-4 days a year over Christmas as the office is shut. These days come out of the employees holiday quota.

I work in engineering, and TBH, where i've worked as staff, if you kicked up about something trivial like this, you'd be laughed at, and 'managed out' soon after.

On a personal level, I'd try to get your employee's onside with it. I understand employment law as got to be considered, but if your a small business, you are going to have to keep focused on doing what you do, not all the BS surrounding H&S/employment law/data protection.

If one positive thing has come out of this thread, at least you have found a cheap way of psychoanalysing future potential employee's....Give them a selection of STW threads to respond to and read the answers.

Some of the responses on this thread show just how far from the real world some peoples expectations have got.

Good luck!

Some of the responses on this thread show just how far from the real world some peoples expectations have got.

wouldn't want to go to any silly team bonding nonsense

And the hotels bit - we offer to pay for hotels so people can have a drink and not worry about how to get home (we also offer taxis if they prefer to go home, but everyone has (so far) taken us up on the hotel offer).

Seriously Mastiles, us cooncil workers are too busy to be mincing around go ape! Not sure it would be a very good PR stunt to pull in the current climate 😐