annual leave and suspension

eamon

If its anything like my employer then the suspension will not have been managed well.

marybelle01

zzzLazyDaisy wrote: »

For what it's worth (and you are of course free to dismiss anything I say) if a client asked me this question, my response would be that the only reason the employee was not attending work was because the employer had taken the decision to suspend him/her on full pay to enable the investigation to take place. While this was a perfectly reasonable response to the situation at the time, the fact remains that the employee was able and willing to work and the only reason they were not at work was the suspension. In those circumstances, my view would be that they were free to do anything they liked with their time during suspension (including going on holiday, visiting, their aged grandmother, or doing a part-time knitting course) as long as the employee made his/herself available for work/meetings when required to do so. Further, holiday entitlement continues to accrue during the period of suspension.

Frankly an employer can't have it both ways - they cannot put an employee on paid suspension from work, and at the same time insist that the employee use up part of their annual leave during that period of suspension.

Daisy

In that case, why does the law say that employees have to book annual leave, must give a specified period of notice, and the employer must agree that they can take the leave? There is a "get out clause" that says "unless you are suspended when you can do as you like". I don't think that taking a holiday is at all the same thing as a knitting class or visiting grandma.

ohreally

Takeaway_Addict wrote: »

Ok, say the employee is suspended and goes on a 2 week holiday and the employer requests via writing (recorded) for a meeting in the middle of the second week then surely there is an issue here as the employee is not ready or able to work when required?

Your position assumes the employee is unable to jump on a plane and return to work.

elsien

zzzLazyDaisy wrote: »

Failing that, perhaps the employer can arrange cover - after all, what would you do if an employee was off sick/on maternity leave while others were on holiday?

I do already have staff both off long term sick and on maternity leave. As well being additionally short staffed due to recruitment difficulties. I requested temporarily to borrow staff from elsewhere using a phrase containing the words up, creek and paddle. Hence the colleague then coming to me to cover for a few months. Which is why having so much leave to fit in is such an issue as it really does defeat the object of why they're there, from my perspective if not from theirs.
An interesting conundrum all the same.

Takeaway_Addict

ohreally wrote: »

Your position assumes the employee is unable to jump on a plane and return to work.

Sorry I probably wasn't clear:

Employee is suspended, no holiday booked.
Employee goes on holiday without going through the proper channels
Employer sends a letter requesting a meeting in 1 weeks time which coincides with the second week of holiday but they are unaware employee is on holiday
Employee doesn't turn up


Employee IMO would be in the wrong for not being ready when called back for work/meetings.

Savvy_Sue

elsien wrote: »

I do already have staff both off long term sick and on maternity leave. As well being additionally short staffed due to recruitment difficulties. I requested temporarily to borrow staff from elsewhere using a phrase containing the words up, creek and paddle. Hence the colleague then coming to me to cover for a few months. Which is why having so much leave to fit in is such an issue as it really does defeat the object of why they're there, from my perspective if not from theirs.
An interesting conundrum all the same.

In your position, I think my response to being offered this person would be along the lines of "while I would love to have Fred join our team, I need to know before he arrives how much leave I will have to allow him to book. Fred believes that he took x weeks leave while he was suspended, which would leave him Y days from now until the end of the year. He is willing to carry (N) days forward [ie the no. above statutory entitlement if you get more than that]. This would be manageable for my department.

"On the other hand, if the leave taken during Fred's suspension must now be returned to him and he has to take 30 days before Christmas, this is not much help in my efforts to get out of the creek I mentioned in my previous email."

If you wanted to spell out exactly how difficult it would be to accommodate him taking his leave, why not? "With Freda on maternity leave until April, and Janet and John on long term sick leave, I am faced with a situation where only one person at a time can book leave. There are x weeks until the end of the leave year. I have y members of staff who between them are entitled to (n) weeks leave. Adding another five weeks of leave to be booked into this equation makes the situation unworkable."

Or however it goes.

ohreally

elsien wrote: »

As well being additionally short staffed due to recruitment difficulties

With over 2.5 million unemployed and seeking work, why do you think there is difficulty in recruiting staff?

source:http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_315111.pdf

elsien

Savvy-Sue, Fred had his return to work interview on the Friday and was with me on the Monday. My manager who arranged the transfer had no idea of the leave situation when the transfer was made and now I've got Fred I think that's it, no further alternatives are likely to be offered. I'll certainly spell out the difficulties but I'm not holding my breath much else will happen.

Ohreally, the recruitment difficulties are due to the jobs being in social care with unsocial hours (more than the fair share of evening/weekend work) with minimum wage fast approaching in an area where there are factory jobs paying more for better hours. The majority of applicants are clearly not genuinely interested and are making up the numbers to avoid being sanctioned.
And as we are voluntary sector and can only pay what local government will pay us to look after people, and they are looking to cut 30 million off the social care budget in the next couple of years, better t's and c's are not imminent. Best value went out of the window to the cheapest tender a while back.
I know the reasons, there is just little I can do about them.

Funky_Bold_Ribena

elsien wrote: »

I do already have staff both off long term sick and on maternity leave. As well being additionally short staffed due to recruitment difficulties. I requested temporarily to borrow staff from elsewhere using a phrase containing the words up, creek and paddle. Hence the colleague then coming to me to cover for a few months. Which is why having so much leave to fit in is such an issue as it really does defeat the object of why they're there, from my perspective if not from theirs.
An interesting conundrum all the same.

In that case you haven't been given an employee you have been given half of one...and you need to make sure that the dept that should have funded the percentage of leave he should have taken to date is passing that extra money into your dept to pay for his untaken leave. 30 days leave is as you know, 6 weeks*; so where are you going to get that other half of the cover from if he is covering for about 12?

*in a normal 9-5, 5 days a week job.