Holidays for staff

J9hey

We have small pub with 5 staff who have been furloughed.  They had holidays booked during covid period which they can't go on.  However as a mall business we can't support all staff taking full years holiday in time we are next open.  Are we in rights to pay them the extra 20% for these periods and still take off there annual leave entitlement? 

austere

I don' think this should be in the "House Buying, Renting & Selling" section

Comms69

J9hey said:

We have small pub with 5 staff who have been furloughed.  They had holidays booked during covid period which they can't go on.  However as a mall business we can't support all staff taking full years holiday in time we are next open.  Are we in rights to pay them the extra 20% for these periods and still take off there annual leave entitlement? 

Yes as long as the appropriate notice is served, as it currently stands (obviously there's going to be a lot of court claims next year) you can pay your staff full pay for annual leave.

hazyjo

Have heard the general advice is to let them extend it into next year so they have a couple of years to use it.

Saying that, if people are offered money for it instead of taking it, they'd quite possibly want to accept!

bucksbloke

J9hey said:

We have small pub with 5 staff who have been furloughed.  They had holidays booked during covid period which they can't go on.  However as a mall business we can't support all staff taking full years holiday in time we are next open.  Are we in rights to pay them the extra 20% for these periods and still take off there annual leave entitlement? 

You can only do this if the contract allows you to define holidays. However, they may also have a claim that they are not well rested if forced to take all holiday now. We are asking our employees to take 50% of holiday before August, a further 25% between Sept and Christmas and then 25% after new year before March 31. They can carry over up to five days normally, but we will let them carry over anything below 28 days (inc BH) for up to 2 years like the new gov.uk guidance. 

Comms69

bucksbloke said:

J9hey said:

We have small pub with 5 staff who have been furloughed.  They had holidays booked during covid period which they can't go on.  However as a mall business we can't support all staff taking full years holiday in time we are next open.  Are we in rights to pay them the extra 20% for these periods and still take off there annual leave entitlement? 

You can only do this if the contract allows you to define holidays. However, they may also have a claim that they are not well rested if forced to take all holiday now. We are asking our employees to take 50% of holiday before August, a further 25% between Sept and Christmas and then 25% after new year before March 31. They can carry over up to five days normally, but we will let them carry over anything below 28 days (inc BH) for up to 2 years like the new gov.uk guidance. 

Sorry that’s nonsense, any employer can dictate holidays. Eg dictating they are taken on bank holidays. 

sharpe106

They are already booked so no notice is needed to be given. You just need to top up the pay to 100%. If you want to make then take the full entitlement then you need to give them sufficient notice. Although if you do that you will have 5 upset members of staff. 

Grumpy_chap

I am aware of some quite large companies that have said if holiday was already booked then the employees still need to take the holiday as and when already booked and it is just tough if those employees feel they are wasting their annual leave because they cannot go away as they may have hoped.

That is a similar approach lots of large companies take if you find you are sick but it clashes with when you would have been on holiday - i.e. the holiday was already booked so bad luck that you can't take sick pay, and why should all sickness be for the company to pay the hit, never the employee.

The above might mean the staff feel hard done by, but sometimes that is just how life is.  You may also want to explain to the staff the implications if the business has to take this as well as the furlough - there must be a lot of costs to a pub even if closed and not all those costs can be off-set by the coronavirus support that has been made available.  Wastage on spoiled stock and rent are two things that immediately come to mind.