Holiday from Work

Ted_Boon

My cousin works for a national company but he works in a locality where there is only him and one other person. They were both working for another company that was taken over by this current company under TUPE. When they worked for the previous company, if the colleague took annual leave they got someone in to cover but when my cousin took annual leave the colleague liked the extra hours so always covered.

Since working for the new company, they have been told that annual leave will only be approved if they cover each others hours which would mean that on the weeks that his colleague is off, this pushes his hours worked to over 60 per week. Unfortunately this is creating a bad atmosphere between them both as colleague always covered my cousin's leave so is happy to continue to do that but my cousin, although covering at the moment, would prefer not to.

My cousin loves his job but is unsure what to do, any advice would be most welcome. Thank you. Ted B

SeduLOUs

What does the contract say about compulsory overtime?

Even if not covered, the willingness to do it for a period of time before raising any concerns may potentially weaken any case cousin has. How long has this been going on?

Had cousin refused from the outset on the grounds that he has no contractual obligation to perform the overtime (assuming he does have grounds), then they would have had no choice but to get someone else to cover to avoid breaching the colleague's contract by not allowing him to take holidays.

specialboy

We do this in my work, there are two of us who have to cover each other but before booking any holidays we discuss with each other first and don't book any days off in December.

TELLIT01

Surely it's up to the company to ensure that they have sufficient staff to cover holiday / sickness etc. People taking leave shouldn't be dependant on the good will of other staff.
I know I'd had enough of my last workplace by the end of my normal working day. The thought of adding another 20 hours a week there would not be a good one!

SeduLOUs

TELLIT01 wrote: »

Surely it's up to the company to ensure that they have sufficient staff to cover holiday / sickness etc.

It is. But they may have covered this by having a clause in the contract requiring staff to work overtime according to the 'needs of the business' or similar.

That combined with the fact the cousin has been willingly covering the holidays for a period of time without raising any concern could leave him without a leg to stand on.

We simply don't have enough information so perhaps a call to ACAS would be the best advice I can offer.

TBagpuss

It's dificult, as in many jobs it is common for colleagues to cover each others absences. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the same total amount gets done, it may be that the person providing cover has to prioritise so that the most importnat things get done.

Are the extra hours down to how long the location is open, or is it more about how much there is to do? e.g., if you are running a shop which is open 8-8, then you need somone there for the extra hours, if you are in an office environoment it may be that you can (say) cover urgent enquiries and material but will have a backlog of less urgent tasks to work through once the other person returns.

Is any of the work anything which could be outsourced? Could the main office provide any remote assistance to cut down on the extra hours needed?

Is this the only location where the workforce is so small? (i.e. in other locations, is cover srpead between more people, so that each person has to provide some heklp, but is not doubling their workload?)

On a practuical level, i would suggest that your cousin and his colleague try to think about the practicalities, so that if they then approach head ofice they can not onl set out exactly why this request presents a problem, but can also offer some solutions. It would aslo be useful if they can present it as something which benefits the business,
not just them.

Obviously if your cousin's contract doesn't say anything about adittional house as required by the company then they may not be able to force him, but he probably doesn't want them to see him as awkward and uncooperative either.

So, for instance, I think that the company would be more likely to see him as helpful rather than as a trouble maker if the approach was "Of course I'm happy to help out, however covering all of colleagues work means I will be working a 12 hour day (or as appropriate), which I don;t feel is sustainable and which I feel would increase the risk of errors / accidents (again, as appropriate depending on the type of work) I / we would propose that we [and suggestion here - e.g. have a part time temp for 10 hours a week / send all of our widgets to head office for checking instead of doing that on site / temporarily amend the company policy to allow extra time for x paperwork to be returned to head office / whatever he and his colleague can come up with which would make the work load more manageable.

If you are asking for cover, think about what the cover is for and what would be less expesive for the company - for instance, if your cousins role includes doing all his own admin work, it might be possible to suggest that the company gets an admin temp in to do the admin side of things for both of them, freeing up your cousin's time to do the more specialised parts of his job and to provide essenia lcover for his colleague.

It's aslo worth his discusion with his collegaue what they can each do in the tun up to aholiday, and on return, to minimise the cover needed.