It’s rapidly approaching that time of year again – the skeleton crew is in operation, staff disappear to make merry, and you lose half of December to run your business!
Before we get into the silly season, let’s answer some of the key questions we get around holiday:
How much holiday entitlement do my employees get?
“It depends” is the short answer.
Normally, this would be specified in their contract of employment.
If you don’t have any contracts, or, which is more likely, the contract is out of date, then the statutory entitlement applies – you can’t give employees any less holiday than the statutory minimum, no matter what is in the contract they signed.
(Just to be clear, neither of those situations is desirable, and we’d strongly recommend taking action to change that)
A full-time employee’s statutory minimum holiday entitlement in any year is 28 days, which can include bank holidays.
What if they don’t go on holiday?
As an employer, you need to make sure your employees take their legal breaks under the Working Time Regulations (WTR). You are not allowed to pay them instead of allowing them to take holidays.
If you don’t let them take holidays, and there is an accident due to them being “overworked,” it’s your head on the block; in the worst case, for corporate manslaughter.
Far more common is office staff claim mental health issues due to their manager not stopping them from working at 2am answering emails.
Although staff are supposed to be equally responsible for following health and safety guidelines, once again, it is ultimately you, the employer, who will be prosecuted for not making them have their breaks.
It is not a defence to say, “They are grown-ups, they can make their own decisions”.
Do you have ANY rights?! Here’s one…
You CAN tell your staff when to take their holiday so that they have their legal breaks and the work still gets done.
To do this, you need to give the staff twice as much notice of the holiday as the length of it – if you want them to take 5 days holiday, you need to give them 10 calendar days written notice.
They cannot legally object to you putting them on annual leave.
Keep an eye on how much holiday staff have taken during the year and make sure that they take all their holiday before the end of the holiday year.
And if your holiday year is the calendar year, you should move that task to the top of your Christmas list: you don’t want everyone suddenly requesting all of December off!
