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Posted By Sean Warburton
Hi all, strange one this, hopefully someone can help.
We have an employee who refuses to take their annual leave, strange i know, but true. If they continue to refuse leave this may leave us in breech of the Working Time Directive 98. It may also lead to Health & Safety issues, IE failing to protect the health,safety and welfare of employees due to fatigue. Can we as employers enforce the individual to take holidays due to this?
Thanks for any help,
Sean
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Posted By Raymond Rapp
Sean
Without knowing the full implications of the working time directive I would say yes. As an employer you are able to enforce almost whatever you like. In any case, presumably the employee's contract stipulates the holiday he/she is entitled to and therefore if he does not take it then he is in breach of that contract!
Send them over to me for a couple of weeks - I need a hand, ha.
Ray
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Posted By Lilian McCartney
Hi Sean,
Employees have a responsibility to co-operate and follow employers H&S procedures, policies etc and as the Working Time Regulations is, in effect, a H&S piece of regs they are duty bound to follow these. The employer should be finding out why they can't be followed.
This is another area of overlap to HR.
Have they given a reason for not wanting to go on hols? Perhaps one reason could be is that they feel quite stressed about amount of work waiting when they get back?
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Posted By Alan Connolly
Here's another point to consider:
Some employees don't want to take holidays if they are stealing from the organisation; because if they go on holidays they are far more likely to be discovered. This is because s/he is not there to cover their tracks.
I would put some effort in to finding out the reasons your employee won't take holidays........
Alan
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Posted By Sean Warburton
Thanks for your comments. I should have pointed out this is a factory production job, no work will pile up in there absence, it will be covered by other operators. They are not giving a justifiable reason to be honest, and are quite adamant we can't "make" them take holidays.
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Posted By Jonathan Breeze
In a former life we had an employee who just couldn't face not working.
It gave him too much time to think and take stock of his life and face issues he could avoid by working.
Moral - approach this one very tactfully with HR as there may be deeper issues than you are aware of.
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Posted By steve e ashton
Sean:
Not entirely certain I understand the context / background to your query.
Your shift patterns / working arrangements must ensure compliance with the working time regulations - and avoid excessive fatigue amongst your workforce - WITHOUT taking account of breaks for annual leave.
Your posting may imply that you are relying on the workers to use their annual leave entitlement in some way to alleviate an otherwise excessive workload? If this is the case, then you need to review your shift and / or work patterns!
I'm sure that isn't what you intended to say though?
If a worker wants to work - there shouldn't really be any issue with that. What you do about it will depend on how flexible you want to be - whether you allow the worker to 'carry forward' leave from one year to the next, or are willing to 'buy back' some or all of the untaken leave entitlement.. Is it a case of use it or lose it. (Take it or leave it!)
Sorry, but I simply don't see a problem with a worker wanting to work unless there's a problem with the way the work is organised!
Steve
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Posted By Gff
Do you have a use them or loose them policy or do you pay fo days not taken, and do you have a lot of overtime going??
What ever the cause this should be sorted by HR with SOME input from H&S (I oiled my sholders this weekend you see)
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Posted By MT You might find this page helpful: http://www.direct.gov.uk...rsAndTimeOff/DG_10034711Also, the Regs state: Leave may only be taken in the leave year in respect of which it is due and It may not be replaced with payment in lieu I suspect both of these suggest that the holidays have to be taken. I agree with some other posters who have suggested that you may need to find out why the person doesn't want to take their holidays. I know of a mental health charity who has a person who attends their workshop in their annual leave periods as they suffer from a mental health problem which means they don't like being alone with nothing to do, so they prefer to be active.
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Posted By Gff
MT
My contract of employment allows me to carry over holidays or receive payment for those not taken.
So even though the legislations says that I have agreen to recieve a payment if I don't take all my leave, this may be the case for seans guys
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Posted By Sean Warburton
Thanks all for your comments, with some very good points. But for the sake of the thread, this is a factory operator where all work is covered during absence, the aspects of the job, shift patterns and operational factors have been assessed and are compliant. I simply want to know, can we force an employee to take statutory holidays from work? They may well have issues outside work, as some rightly say, and we are looking at all the possible reasons for refusal, but can we enforce employees to take up their statutory leave??
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Posted By steve e ashton
Sean:
Sorry, a little more confusion now from me...
Your initial posting asked about annual leave. Your latest mentions 'statutory' holidays.
Statstutory holidays are those a person is entitled to above and beyond their annual leave... (Christmas, Easter, etc).
They are set by Government - and most large employers will try to reduce workforce on site on those days - simply because, in the past, strong union pressure has resulted in many paying double- or triple- time for those workers who do work.
So if your issue is that you want to close down the factory on public holidays (to avoid paying excessive overtime) then yes, you can...
Or you can do what others have done over the past ten- twenty years, and negotiate away the 'rights' to high overtime rates by 'annualising' the workers' hours etc.
So - I clearly still do not understand the issue... Do you mean annual or statutory?
Steve
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Posted By Sean Warburton
Statutory, which is 20 days a year, and is why i said annual, not just Christmas, new year, bank holidays.
Thanks
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