Leaving job and taking holiday

Undervalued

FlorayG said:

Well that went much as expected. She gave her notice and asked if she could take 10 days of her holiday. She got a really nastily worded letter back from the company owner saying no, she can't take holiday, she has to work her whole month notice or they will take legal action, she can't work for another company until then or they will take legal action, basically they don't care about their employees wants and needs; she's had no holiday in a year.
Considering she is a domiciliary care worker you think they would have considered the possible consequences to their clients of such an attitude.
So I guess she's stuck with them for the month

Whilst it costs nothing to be polite, what they are saying is perfectly lawful. 

She could, for what it is worth, make a complaint about their genera attitude to the Care Quality Commission (or whatever it is called) and it might (but probably won't) get them a minor slap on the wrist but it is not going to change anything.

It may be that they have had problems in the past with staff leaving without notice? A significant number of people come on here with variations on wanting to do just that, so it is not uncommon!

elsien

CQC don’t give a slap on the wrist on that context. It doesn’t work like that. 

In terms of their decision, there is a real crisis in social care at the moment so people walking out without notice (Additional cost implications aside) tends to mean the use of agency staff to fill the gaps which is also not great for the clients who are being supported.

Yes, they could have been politer. And they may well be a poor employer – some of them do seem to want blood for their money – but I fully understand why they want her to work her notice. 

And anyone who takes that out on the client shouldn’t be in the job in the first place. 

TELLIT01

The one area I would be critical of the employer is not insisting that the employee does take their holiday entitlement.  Staff working virtually every day is not good for the staff member, or for the care they are giving.

LinLui

FlorayG said:

Well that went much as expected. She gave her notice and asked if she could take 10 days of her holiday. She got a really nastily worded letter back from the company owner saying no, she can't take holiday, she has to work her whole month notice or they will take legal action, she can't work for another company until then or they will take legal action, basically they don't care about their employees wants and needs; she's had no holiday in a year.
Considering she is a domiciliary care worker you think they would have considered the possible consequences to their clients of such an attitude.
So I guess she's stuck with them for the month

Basically, they are requiring an employee to abide by their contract when the employee doesn't want to. And you think the problem is them? I presume that you also believe that employers should be able to breach their employees contracts when they want or need to? I also presume that if the employers act unlawfully you'll be fine about passing up the option of legal action to enforce the employees rights and interests?

I am no particular fan of care companies, but perhaps what they are thinking about is that an employee wants to take leave with barely any notice during the busiest period for leave, leaving them struggling to provide the required care for people who need it??? What about the clients "wants and needs"? They don't get choices - I'm sure that they'd love to be able to look after their own needs, but they don't have that choice and must depend on others.I wonder if she (or you) would like to "consider the possible consequences of an attitude" that suggests that the care worker can just walk out when they fancy without any consequences? Seems that the "attitude" here is actually yours. Hopefully hers doesn't reflect the same approach. 

She might want to leave sooner, but she definitely doesn't need to leave sooner; and as you have already been told several times, the fact that she chose not to take holiday is down to her and not the employer. 

Jude57

TELLIT01 said:

The one area I would be critical of the employer is not insisting that the employee does take their holiday entitlement.  Staff working virtually every day is not good for the staff member, or for the care they are giving.

Just to weigh in on this point. I used to manage a large team and one team member regularly had annual leave untaken as year end approached. I used to keep a close eye on annual leave because our job was stressful and emotionally intense so it was important that staff got down time to de-stress and regroup. I'd periodically send team-wide reminders, have it on team meeting agendas and raise it in monthly one-to-one meetings with those individual staff who didn't book leave after all the reminders. And still this one team member would have weeks of leave untaken which they'd want to carry forward and we'd have the same discussion every year as I explained, yet again, that leave could not be carried over. They thought the organisation's rules were unfair and that people should be allowed to carry as much leave forward as they wanted, or be paid for untaken leave each year in a sort of savings scheme, failing to understand or care that, if everyone did this, maintaining an acceptable level of cover year-round would be virtually impossible, never mind the toll it would take on people's well-being. I couldn't very well stand at the door barring their entry to force them to take time off so I don't know what more I could have done, short of disciplinary action.

When this team member went sick with stress, no-one in the management team was surprised but I admit I was shocked when, some months later (as contractual sick pay was about to end) this team member claimed via Occupational Health that they hadn't been allowed to take annual leave, hence their illness. I'm not sure how Occupational Health responded to the mass of evidence that the person was lying, but the individual was back at work a few weeks later. I still had to push them to take leave but they at least stopped arguing that they should be paid in lieu.

Sometimes, people are their own worst enemy and, frankly, it shouldn't be a manager's job to have to force grown adults to take time off to protect their own welfare.

TELLIT01

The only time I've known of a situation where a staff member wasn't taking their leave, their manager ordered them to take the time off.  Whether that person's work standard had dropped or if their manager was concerned about the lack of leave coming back to bite them, or some other reason I don't know.  Manager's do have the ability to insist on people taking leave and they also have a duty of care towards their staff.  That's why I was critical of the management in the situation above.

General_Grant

It is well known that USA employees generally have less holiday entitlement than in the UK.
However, decades ago, I worked for a US company which insisted that every member of staff take at least one two-week holiday each year.  Part of the reasoning was that this was more likely to bring to light any wrong doing.

chapea

We had the same at a major high street bank. 

A 2 week holiday had to be taken at least once a year supposedly for stress reasons but also if any wrongdoing it was more likely to show after 2 weeks than someone just taking short breaks here and there