Can an employer tell you when to take your holidays?

shikoku

...and if so under what circumstances?

shikoku

Okay I just found this, quite surprising.

If your employer wants you to take holiday
Your employer can decide when some or all of your holidays must be taken. For instance, they may require you to take some of your holiday to cover the bank holidays, or may require the whole company to take holiday during a Christmas shutdown.
This may be in your contract of employment, or it may be normal practice built up over time. An employer has to give the same amount of notice as you do.

jdturk

It's because alot of jobs need to have structure to holidays, ie factories that shut down, teaching etc etc etc

sarah-anne

It depends on your employer.

liney

sarah-anne wrote: »

It depends on your employer.

No, it depends on your employer whether they will, most won't, but they are entitled to give you notice to take some or all of your holidays as longas it meets the statutory requirement of "twice the time in notice of that to be taken" ie 2 weeks notice for 1 week off.

ses6jwg

You need to put yourself in their shoes.

If they are a small business, the wrong people taking the wrong holidays at the wrong time could seriously impact on their business- aka. your job.

With regard to larger companies, they need to maintain a suitable level of staffing and this is why holiday dfates will usually be allocated on a "first come, first served basis"

heretolearn_2

Yes, but I'm sure if it is unreasonable then you could do something about it.

I'm a partner in a small business. We have a compulsary shut-down between Xmas and New Year as everything's so dead then. It takes 2 or 3 days of the staff holiday allowance. We've only had one complaint from a new member of staff (and we tell everyone this right from the January that year) who also wanted to know if we had the legal right to do this. Yes we do. And we have no intention of paying out lots of money to keep the offices open over that time just so one person can sit at their desk doing nothing.

hellokitty08

Yes they can, under what ever circumstances they like, http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Timeoffandholidays/DG_10029788

However each company policy will vary, check your contract, staff handbook, HR department for your company policy.

BERFFRO

My old workplace used to do this, The shy and quiet one's where always worse off as most of the time they had to work Mondays, then off until Thursday and back in on Friday the reason they had to do this, Because our boss wanted to go to steam engine festivals throughout the summer months! This is bringing back memories of how many time's i have fought for them!!

winnie81

My husband works for a very large factory and the majority of holidays are dictated by factory shut downs i.e Xmas, Easter, May half-term, 2 weeks August etc it goes with the job sometimes.

Apricot

My work always has a xmas shutdown of two weeks which we have to keep a few days holidays for. For other holidays we are only allowed to take them if someone else has not already booked the time off (v small office). Tbh it works well here as we have a holiday planning board in one of the offices and so we can see who has booked what dates.