Holiday and Furlough Leave
So things are a bit different to usual and, as to be expected, there have been some temporary tweaks to the rules that govern and manage HR processes and policies. We wanted to let you know about some of the changes impacting on employee holiday or annual leave.
The majority of employees will use their statutory or paid holiday entitlement within their current “holiday year”. The minimum being 5.6 weeks (28 days) including bank holidays.
However due to the Covid 19 pandemic and the actions taken by the government to attempt to reduce the spread of the virus it may not be possible for staff to take all their holiday entitlement. They may be isolating, furloughed, not able to travel etc. This in turn means that if they are unlikely to be able to use all their holiday entitlement, meaning they will have holiday days left to take at the end of the year.
To help employees not lose any holiday a temporary new law has been introduced which will allow employees to roll over up to 4 weeks unused, paid holiday, over a 2 year period.
It is likely that some contracts of employment allow employees to carry over a certain amount of unused holiday and this new law will not affect this. Don’t forget that employees still accrue their holiday entitlement if they are furloughed or temporarily not working.
As always we would encourage you to confirm arrangements in writing if you do not have an arrangement in place at the moment and seek agreement from the employee.
Other Things to Think About
Should an employee decide to not want to take the time off (maybe their holiday has been cancelled) you can still ask them to take this time off and if they want to change when they take the time off they should have agreement from you.
We hope this helps explain this temporary change to holiday arrangements and if you have any questions on HR or people processes please get in contact with us.
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