Pay when office is closed?

Russinating

Russinating

Russinating

Soldato
Joined
27 Dec 2005
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17,316
Location
Bristol
How does pay work when the office is closed? We leave for Christmas this Friday and don't return until 6th January. That's 10 working days inclusive of 3 public holidays.

The contract pays for bank and public holidays but doesn't mention the office being closed specifically other than "The Company reserves the right to make temporary reductions in your daily working hours if this is considered necessary with at least one week’s notice."

FYI I'm the employer and just trying to work out what our legal requirement is!

PS. This has been booked/planned for ages, only just come to my attention now because our payroll company are asking if we want to advance the pay (which we will) and what deductions are to be made.
 
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Surely theres either two options?
1)staff get paid annual salary
2)staff get paid hourly/daily for what they work?
 
Pay normally continues from my experience. Majority of the time its a forced holiday which was taken from the normal yearly one. If youre doing well and still earning money in those 10 days despite being closed full pay seems only fair especially being the time of year.

If its not business as normal then give notice of half pay for the holiday period. That clause in your contract should absolve you. However I think youve left it too late to use the clause if you break up on friday.
 
We get a couple of days "given" by the company, and the remainder taken out of our annual leave, but we're only closed from xmas eve - 1st Jan inclusive. Would be a bit harsh to "force" employees to take 7 days leave when they have no choice because the office is closed.
 
Do the staff take it has holiday?

My company is shut from the 24th to the 2nd, with all employees required to take the days that aren't bank holidays as leave. Therefore we are getting paid for it as normal.

If its not taken as leave and the company is simply shut, then its like a weekend (assuming your company is shut weekends too) and not a working day, i.e. no pay or holiday.
 
I presume the weeks notice is defined as 7 days? In which case due to ending on friday are you not leaving this too late to enforce it?
 
I think you've missed the part where this was booked months ago.

Anyway all sorted now, thanks. Asked if she wanted to take it as paid holiday or unpaid and save her holiday and she's saving it.
 
You can enforce the use of annual leave at this period should you wish.

I'll gloss over the worrying part about an employer not knowing this 1 week before the office shutdown :p
 
She's our only employee and we've only been employing for 4 months, and our accountant sorts out payroll so we just have to tell them what days to deduct. Not needed to know this before and won't again until next Christmas either!
 
Mandatory holidays or nil pay?

It's the employer's fault the office is closed! Pay them for days they would work you stingy gets.
 
My company is closed and uses 3 mandatory holiday days over christmas, however that's only 3 and i was informed about it the day i joined. Attempting to take 7 or not pay them is ridiculous.

I'm assuming the 'office' is closed is actually more, you're going on holiday for christmas? Because friday is early to break up, and the 6th is late to come back. Not your employees fault.
 
Joshct said:
My company is closed and uses 3 mandatory holiday days over christmas, however that's only 3 and i was informed about it the day i joined. Attempting to take 7 or not pay them is ridiculous.

I'm assuming the 'office' is closed is actually more, you're going on holiday for christmas? Because friday is early to break up, and the 6th is late to come back. Not your employees fault.
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This.

If you decided you wanted to go on holiday for a month at Christmas, would it be fair to force your employees to do so also?
 
We issue our holiday days about 9 months in advance e.g. April 2014-March 2015 was published in June. We have several 'shutdowns' where shop floor employees are required to take annual leave - these are pretty much in the periods where loads of people are off anyway. Out of 33 days including bank holidays 21 are allocated each year and 12 are allowed to be used at other times. Office staff don't necessarily have all 21 days enforced but you can't run the shop floor properly with loads of people off at the same time and you need periods of downtime for maintenance of machinery.
 
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