Unused leave buy-out proposal is missing some benefit (equity)

dc197

Hello
Please could you offer some advice. 
My employer is changing leave rules so that unused leave can no longer be carrier forward, and so is buying-out everyone's excess balance.  This is fine. 
My remuneration is made up of cash and equity.  Let's say for the sake of example I get £30k cash and £10K equity per year.  I'm taxed on both. Thus, for every day I work I get 3 units of cash and 1 unit of equity, gross. By working the extra days (untaken leave) I feel I have earned extra cash and equity in the relevant proportion. 
The company is proposing to buy out my leave by giving me only the cash portion for the unused days.  This feels like I am missing out of a quarter of what I should have received by working those extra days (the days I did not take as leave).
They explain this by saying that the equity is an annual grant.
Am I missing out, or is the company right?  What is your opinion please?
Thanks

Undervalued

Assuming you are talking about contractual leave (over and above the 5.6 weeks / 28 days statutory minimum) then you need to carefully read the terms and conditions on which it is given. There could well be a "use it or lose it" clause which the employer had been choosing to waive or, like many policies (such as company sick pay) it could well be "discretionary".

TELLIT01

Is the equity element guaranteed or is it discretionary?

Marcon

dc197 said:

Hello
Please could you offer some advice. 
My employer is changing leave rules so that unused leave can no longer be carrier forward, and so is buying-out everyone's excess balance.  This is fine. 
My remuneration is made up of cash and equity.  Let's say for the sake of example I get £30k cash and £10K equity per year.  I'm taxed on both. Thus, for every day I work I get 3 units of cash and 1 unit of equity, gross. By working the extra days (untaken leave) I feel I have earned extra cash and equity in the relevant proportion. 
The company is proposing to buy out my leave by giving me only the cash portion for the unused days.  This feels like I am missing out of a quarter of what I should have received by working those extra days (the days I did not take as leave).
They explain this by saying that the equity is an annual grant.
Am I missing out, or is the company right?  What is your opinion please?
Thanks

That should be easy enough to verify. Look at your contract - what does that specify?

TBagpuss

What does your contract ay? But at the end of the day, they are offering you a specific price for the holiday you haven't taken. The alternative you have is t book time and take the leave. 

Since statutory leave can't b carried forward (except in very specific circumstances) this must be contractual leave and a lot of companies have a 'use it or lose it' policy and/or provisions about what you might be entitled to. 

Presumably if you had taken leave you wouldn't have got extra equity, so it's reasonable not to pay youextra equity now in return for not taking it. 

General_Grant

TBagpuss said:

What does your contract ay? But at the end of the day, they are offering you a specific price for the holiday you haven't taken. The alternative you have is t book time and take the leave. 

Since statutory leave can't b carried forward (except in very specific circumstances) this must be contractual leave and a lot of companies have a 'use it or lose it' policy and/or provisions about what you might be entitled to. 

Presumably if you had taken leave you wouldn't have got extra equity, so it's reasonable not to pay youextra equity now in return for not taking it. 

So one of the specific circumstance where sickness prevented the taking of holiday. 
But there is nothing actually stopping an employer and employee agreeing to carry forward holiday - it is simply that there is no statutory right to do this just because someone didn't get round to asking for holiday.  The law is that an employer cannot operate in such a way as to prevent their employee taking the statutory holiday during the course of the holiday year.