Holiday Entitlement - Opinion on this situation

grizzla said:
I am currently on 34 incl. bank holiday, as we are "not a bank" .
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Hehe, this made me chuckle.

I work for a bank, fortunately I am not in a customer facing function and so the bank holidays are neither here nor there to me other than being off, but these days we have A LOT of staff on phones / in branches who HAVE to work some bank holidays (those that are not classed as protected). We even had some branches open on new years day!
 
Kenai said:
In many cases it's not so much an attitude it's just that a small business often can't as easily afford to pay someone to not be there for over 10% of the working year.

TBH for a standard 5 day a week job, 4 weeks a year off + BH as per minimum is quite enough.
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If you can't employ somebody and give them reasonable leave then don't bother. I've seen many a small company use that excuse you have posted and I don't swallow the line.

I know one place that employees only middle aged women - the reason? The business owner doesn't want to have to pay maternity leave.

As for four weeks out of 52 being enough. It isn't. Work to live, not live to work.

MaX_PoWah said:
Its an issue now as we are ridiculously busy and we want to retain staff but we have struggled for the last 4 years to be fair and i am sure the guys would rather have had jobs at all during that period rather than a few extra days holiday..
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Did you really just trot out "They'll be glad to have a job" line? You sound like a Workhouse owner...sorry small business owner. :D

"Guys, we really value what you contribute to the company and thanks for making us profits but we are only giving you holidays we are legally entitled to give, oh and be glad you have a job."

Charming. I bet you and your dad get more than the minimum legal allowance.

Yes i agree reading everyones responses, the confusing part is as i said, out of the four long term employees 3 of them did not even use all of there 20 days.
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How easy is it to actually book holidays at your place? Some of my friends don't use all their leave because their place of work makes it nigh on impossible to actually book leave.
 
Last edited:
27 days + bank holidays :)

Kenai said:
In many cases it's not so much an attitude it's just that a small business often can't as easily afford to pay someone to not be there for over 10% of the working year. An extra two weeks a year is a fair bit for a small business to accommodate, not least in terms of covering work for the holidaying employees.
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Yep.
 
25 + BH at my old job.

22 + BH at the current place (But the pay is dramatically better and we can work any BH or Saturday we want to accrue more leave).
 
So working for you, 5 days a week. 52 weeks a year is 260 days. Take off the holiday allowance, and it's 240 days.
Other place, 6 days a week. 52 weeks a year is 312. Take off the holiday allowance, and it's 312 days.

Is this guy an idiot? He'll be working more. Yes, it's nice to have more holiday allowance but to have that at the expense of only ever having one day off a week? That's stupid. I used to work in catering and work similar, it's horrible. Without consecutive days it never feels like you've had time off at all.
 
[TW]Fox;23793393 said:
It's also the absolute minimum you are legally entitled to...
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And in what way does that make it unreasonable?

If it was unreasonable, the legal minimum would be more.
 
Kenai said:
And as I asked Fox, in what way does it being the legal minimum make it unreasonable?
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Because, just like minimum wage, it is the least amount that a company can get away with. Four weeks isn't much really. Take in to account that a lot of companies dictate when you can take it then it becomes even less. My wife's previous place required them to use leave when they shut for a week over Christmas. So that left her three weeks for the rest of the year...except she couldn't book leave during the busy summer holiday period because of "staff shortages" or whatever excuse they gave.

On paper four weeks seems OK (just) but in reality it isn't.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
It's what I'd expect if I was working minimum wage. If I'm in a skilled industry, I don't expect minimum wage or minimum conditions.
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...and in a ground stabilization company, presumably operating largely within the construction sector, the 'skilled' workers would more likely be office based engineers rather than the guys on site.
 
Kenai said:
...and in a ground stabilization company, presumably operating largely within the construction sector, the 'skilled' workers would more likely be office based engineers rather than the guys on site.
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But they are clearly raising the wage to keep him (which I doubt is minimum wage anyway), to which I refer to my previous point, if I'm not working minimum wage, I don't expect minimum conditions.
 
Kenai said:
...and in a ground stabilization company, presumably operating largely within the construction sector, the 'skilled' workers would more likely be office based engineers rather than the guys on site.
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Not sure the OP and his father value their employees. "They should be glad to have a job in this climate" so I am guessing decent holiday entitlement isn't a priority.
 
LordSplodge said:
Because, just like minimum wage, it is the least amount that a company can get away with. Four weeks isn't much really. Take in to account that a lot of companies dictate when you can take it then it becomes even less. My wife's previous place required them to use leave when they shut for a week over Christmas. So that left her three weeks for the rest of the year...except she couldn't book leave during the busy summer holiday period because of "staff shortages" or whatever excuse they gave.

On paper four weeks seems OK (just) but reality it isn't.
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I've always found 4 weeks + BH perfectly adequate, honestly an extra weeks holiday a year would make absolutely zero difference to my life and it amazes me people would get so hung up on it that they'd refuse what might otherwise be a brilliant job because they're getting 'the minimum' and it just isn't good enough and somehow constitutes an insult to your worth.
 
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