Just because staff have been told to ‘use them or lose them’ doesn’t mean that is always the case
An employment law consultant has warned companies in Northern Ireland that staff may still be owed annual leave that was not used last year.
HR and Employment law specialist Dylan Loughlin, Principal Consultant at Copacetic Business Solutions in Belfast has warned about how a lack of business administration could mean staff could claim annual leave days from the year before that they were unable to use.
He went online to warn businesses and staff that they could still be owed time-off even if they have been told to “use it or lose it”.
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This is due to regulations that came into force in January 2024 which mean that staff must be told clearly that the holidays that they have must be used within a certain time period while they still have plenty of time to use them.
Dylan took to TikTok to say: “It’s that time of the year again, annual leave, use it or lose it, what’s going on and what are the rules, save this video in case you need to refer back to it. But there’s an understanding that there’s a use it or lose it system within workplaces, so if you don’t use your annual leave within the annual leave year, then you lose it.
“A lot of my clients would have their annual year, the 1st of January to the 31st of December, so that is their annual leave year.
“In January 2024, regulations came into place, the Working time regulation amendments, which amended the Working time regulations, and it imposed additional obligations on the employer.
“So the first sort of obligation is that the employer needs to recognize the employee’s annual leave. So that is a memo, a system, something to say, you’re a full-time worker, you’ve got 28 days annual leave, so that satisfies step one.
“The next is a reasonable opportunity to take that leave or encourage people to take that leave. So that is your 28 days annual leave, put in your annual leave for the year ahead, so that’s a reasonable opportunity to take that leave.
“And then in that email message system, there should be a line at the bottom saying if you do not take your annual leave within that coming year, you’re going to lose it, so that satisfies the three requirements of the Working time regulation amendments.
“Where this falls apart at the seams is employers who might not necessarily be on top of their administration or may not know these rules.
“So let’s take for example, a restaurant. If they then in November time say Dylan, we were closed for, the 12th of July holiday, we were closed for St Patrick’s Day, for example, so you now have 14 days and we’re sitting in November. If they then say, well, you’re going to lose these holidays because we’re coming up to December and you can’t take that annual leave, that doesn’t give me a reasonable opportunity to take that leave.
“So therefore the amendment regulations haven’t been satisfied, so I’ll be allowed to carry those days over.
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