[Closed] Carrying over annual leave

Not where I work. My GF can carry over up to 5 where she works.

yup, think the limit is supposed to be 3 days though

depends on your work T&C, there is no legal obligation to let you however some companies do for good will

Mine are paying me for 5, and letting 5 roll over this year

Yeah. Everywhere I have worked I've been able to; some places it's been at the line manager's discrection but that's never been a problem.
I think I've had between 3 and 5 days possible to carry over, but normally it has to be used by the end of March.

We can't.

Shame, as I've 2 days left, and we come back to work after Chistmas on a Thursday, so that would have been perfect. 😕

We can't

I have 30 hours left too and there's no availability (been asking for weeks)

B.O.W

Allowed to carry 5 over, but don't trust 'em anymore so make sure I take them all.

Up to 12 days here.

12 automatically, more if my line manger approves it

Yep, up to five days. The boss likes us to have a plan in place to use them by the end of Q1 though.

surely if you have entitlement but they won't let you take it because of staffing rotas, etc., then they have to let you carry over or pay you for the extra hours?

5 days

That's interesting, thanks. So based on my comprehensive survey most employers allow some sort of carry over 🙂

I'm in the "line manager with discretion" position. I've had my first ever request from a team member and I can't see any reason not to allow it. So long as there are limits on how can accrued, why wouldn't it be OK?

@Houns - that's really crap. The employer surely has to let you (or pay you in lieu)

5 days here

why wouldn't it be OK?

As a manager and depending on the nature of your business you need to decide the impact of having X number of employees not working for Y number of extra days next year.

Once decided, you need to live with the decision and its effectb on any results.

10 days carry over here (public sector), if refused by management you have right to be "payed up" at 1/365th of your salary for every day refused.
Plus can accumulate up to 3 working days flexi time/month, so this year I had the usual 30 days, 10 carried over from last year and 36 flexi days 😀

hilldodger - Member
10 days carry over here (public sector), if refused by management you have right to be "payed up" at 1/365th of your salary for every day refused.
Plus can accumulate up to 3 working days flexi time/month, so this year I had the usual 30 days, 10 carried over from last year and 36 flexi days

Here we go. I believe the standard quote is, "this will not end well..."

Please don't tell us you're in the fire service

Up to 5 days here with group director approval but it has to be taken within the 1st 4 months of the following year.

why wouldn't it be OK?

What Kryton said, ours is determined by the expected workload Dec Vs Jan-March, if it's busier end of this year then caryover, if not then take a long christmas break.

Also theres a legal minimum holiday requirement, so if you carryover holliday you might not have taken enough thos year to fulfill the criteria.

I missed three weeks of AL this year - rotas already in place. I was told that I couldn't carry any days over.

I appreciate there are commercial considerations to whether to allow carry-over and I've thought those through. However I'm equally concerned to be flexible and reasonable with people. I don't want to cheese valuable staff off (we're software developers) by being dog in the manger about something like this, even if we take a short term hit on productivity.

We're allowed 3 days, and to be taken within January.

Letting people carry over is sometimes preferable to the alternative depending on work deadlines. I've just had someone join my team on an internal transfer. I've got a deadline in January and the team member just told me that she didn't manage to take holiday in previous role as she was "too busy" so would I mind if she took most of December off....

I like Willards model of 5 days but plan to use it by the end of 1Q which is our corporate policy. Any more and I think you're just projecting a problem into the future (which I may do with the above example)

grizedaleforest - Member
I appreciate there are commercial considerations to whether to allow carry-over and I've thought those through. However I'm equally concerned to be flexible and reasonable with people. I don't want to cheese valuable staff off (we're software developers) by being dog in the manger about something like this, even if we take a short term hit on 8)productivity.

Absolutely right. Its your call, your the boss. But if you start being criticsed over that drop in productivity by your Snr's, you'd better have a plan to get it back up, because the "I wanted to be nice to my valuable team" excuse often but not always means nothing to the bean counters.

Absolutely right. Its your call, your the boss. But if you start being criticsed over that drop in productivity by your Snr's, you'd better have a plan to get it back up, because the "I wanted to be nice to my valuable team" excuse often but not always means nothing to the bean counters.

My contract states 5 but I asked really nicely and they let me carry over 7

We can carry 5 but must use by the end of January or lose it.

The reasoning in our case is that we encourage staff to have a decent amount of holiday during the year due to a high stress job. We actually want people to take time off, so in an ideal world, nobody should have any left by the end of the year.

can carry 5 over but they must be used by the end of Q1...

5 days here. I always go away for a week in January anyway even if there was a timescale for using them (which there isn't) I'd be fine. I do tend to carry the 5 days over every year.

5 days but I have to beg

Up to 7 I think here, although they can be flexible (i.e if you take some leave in the first month of the new business year)

Allowed to carry 5 days over. Meant to use it by a certain date but no one ever does.

I carried 15 over in April this year, my office manager didn't want to let me take more than 5, but I put a compelling case together that involved losing a client providing 30% of the office annual turnover and my request was agreed.

Absolutely right. Its your call, your the boss. But if you start being criticsed over that drop in productivity by your Snr's, you'd better have a plan to get it back up, because the "I wanted to be nice to my valuable team" excuse often but not always means nothing to the bean counters.

Productivity does not equal Days sat in the office. Pissed off disgruntled demotivated staff are not nice to have about the place.

Agree with Goeffj as well. Depending on ones employer this is often an easy or difficult balance to make.

None normally (new policy) but I've been allowed to carry 5 over due to impending arrival of wreckerjnr.......
If I were not permitted to take them due to workloads, I'd just take get the time back by another means (sick, skive etc)
There's no way I'd just give them 30 hours, and no way I'd expect any of my reports to lose out.

We're allowed to carry over 5 but they have to be used by the end of April (Our annual leave year starts at the beginning of April).

yes, uop to 5 days, and you can up to 5 days paid back.

Kryton57
Here we go. I believe the standard quote is, "this will not end well..."

Please don't tell us you're in the fire service

No, an obscure part of the civil service, I do 9-10 hour days but there's an overtime payment ban so the extra hours build up to silly amounts of flexi time 😕

(public sector)

we can carry over 40 hours (work shifts so leave etc calculated and taken/awarded in hours not days).

Reason most employers restrict carry over is financial - carried over holiday is an accrual on the balance sheet, so has a direct impact on P&L,

Which is why most business who permit the carry over also require them ti be used by year end.

in my job it's upto 13 days annual leave carry forward now (IOM Civil Service) plus we have upto 18 days flexi leave each year. nice when the tracks start 2 miles from work 🙂

Not allowed for me, don't really understand why, our busiest time is nov/dec, quietest is jan/feb.

Up to 36 hours leave automatically carried over here. Makes no difference to me as I usually carry over most of it...its sort of a backup week that I keep back 'just in case'.

Occasionally work will decide we can take over 72hrs when they are struggling to keep up with the workstack over winter so it can have benefits for the employer as well.

We don't let ours carry any over , plenty of time in the year to do take it 😀

Having said that we may let them carry some over if they ask nicely

My leave is in hours (prison service) & I get 320 hrs a year leave, based on a 39 hr week, & can carry 70 hrs over, which I always do cos we can't usually get leave when we want/need it!

We can carry 5 officially, in practice there's a bit more discretion since the reason people want to carry more is our erratic workload, very seasonal

Strikes me from past experience that there's a correlation between the sort of boss that won't consider letting people carry leave on, and the sort of boss that likes to make it very hard to take holidays at anything but terrible times.

3 to be used by march, but given the maximum annual leave is 25 days , it rarely gets carried over.

Last real job was carry 10 I think and able to borrow 5. Then there was the extra we got for working a 37hr week which was 13 days but had to be taken in the year and then flexi. And yes it was former government....

No not at all (use it or loose it) used to be 5 days to be taken within 2 months but since it changed from "personnel" run by a retired navel captain to "HR" run by a hard nosed career woman its all about "the business"

Which as tomhoward said seems silly as Nov/Dec is silly busy for us so we often end up short staffed during those times as the firm has a whole myriad of combinations of staff that can't be off at the same time irrespective of trade requirements (I still have 11 days to take) but my deputy was off sick for 5 months of this year & I'm not allowed to take holiday when he's off.
I also have 7 lieu days(should be taken in the month accrued but must be taken in the same calendar year) to take from various times when I've worked 24 hrs straight through or had to come in at the weekend.

I worked out that given the combinations I have 32 days to take and about 30 days in the year when it would be possible?

MrOvershoot - Member

I worked out that given the combinations I have 32 days to take and about 30 days in the year when it would be possible?

Hah, yes. When I was back in the bank we were told one day that there was a non-negotiable new policy, only one person off at a time. Went and did the maths, between the team we had about 400 days of holiday to take and only 250 working days to take them in.

I don't think it's a good idea to let staff carry over holidays (there are some circumstances it is appropriate). Annual leave is important for the employee, it is valuable downtime for them to de-stress. Usually people carry over holuday because they haven't been organised enough to plan it in across the year (I appreciate some HR people fail to do the maths regarding the rules as above) which is the compounded the following year by having even more leave to manage. It is important it is spread across the year, leaving loads to Christmas is unfair on colleagues who have planned it properly.

Taking the 2nd and 3rd of Jan I don't really count as carry over.

So before making the decision think of the future impact on the employee and their colleagues and any precedent you may be setting as well as practical business considerstions.

When the leave policy allows for more days than the legal minimum I see no problem with carrying over a few days. An employee may be perfectly happy to take 4 weeks one year knowing they can carry the extra week and take 6 the following year for a one-off longer holiday, getting married, or even starting a new man shed project 🙂

It's not going to affect work life balance...inability to book leave due to staffing levels and being forced to use up leave at unappealing times of the year is no doubt a much bigger work:life/moral killer than ensuring and employee uses/loses their leave allowance within 365 days.

In the company like mine it's difficult getting Christmas leave until the last minute when they decide to relax the thresholds so the carry over also allows us some slack if we use more or less than expected. This year I have 1 day approved, but it's likely they will offer more on Christmas eve.

Another point to remember is if sickness prevents you using your annual leave entitlement for the year

Under those circumstances you are allowed to carry over up to four weeks unused leave to the next year

Many firms try to deny this including the one spooky b329 works for, but it is EC legislation and they have to abide by it

Some saying the holiday carry over is bad - you can only ever do it for 1 year maximum. Then the following year you can only carry over your entitlement, it doesn't compound year after year.

E.g. 2013 to 2014 - first year of employment I can carry over 5.
2014 to 2015 I can carry over 5, but got 5 from 2013 to 2014, so I've got to use up my allowance.

I see it as a good way to build up extra holiday for emergencies, and especially as my first year was quite busy it was easy to not take holiday, I was happy to lose it either way.

Up to 20 days carry-over for us. We only get 20d annually.

Sad thing is, most ****ers here have 40d annual leave saved up ready to use, most of the year!

I tend to carry over the same number of days each year - so I always use the full annual allowance and have a buffer spare so if I have an emergency near the end of the year I can eat into the extra 5 days.

Just carried five days over to next year and used them to book long weekends away in Prague, Budapest and Barcelona. Would rather do that than have a week off here in Nov/Dec.

[i]Under those circumstances you are allowed to carry over up to four weeks unused leave to the next year

Many firms try to deny this including the one spooky b329 works for, but it is EC legislation and they have to abide by it[/i]

We had a situation where they insisted, we had a guy that took a year off on 50% pay, (when the financial meltdown happened) he buggered off to the Philippines and when he came back, he was told to stay at home for another few weeks as he had to use the leave he had accrued whilst away! He wasn't happy as that was time he could have stayed out there surfing! (fingers crossed as he has timed his latest trip perfectly with the recent Typhoon and we haven't heard from him yet...)