Colleagues can now boost their annual leave entitlement through a newly introduced employee benefit.
The buying of annual leave has been introduced for the remainder of 2019 from 31 May, with each person able to request up to one week per year.
Requests for additional leave this year must be submitted by 31 May and for 2020 by 15 December.
As a result of operational planning already in place this benefit will be available to employees of the commercial business only for 2019 with a view to reviewing it for operations in 2020.
HR Business Partner Vikki Atkin said: "This is the latest of a number of benefits available to colleagues and comes as we are introducing the Smart Hive benefits platform.
“This gives employees access to all of the benefits they are currently using and others they might be interested in taking advantage of.”
Further updates on Smart Hive will be emailed out in the coming weeks. Alternatively, for more information, contact Vikki by emailing vatkin@idealstandard.com.
The conditions for buying leave are below:
The conditions for employees to buy holiday are as follows:
• The organisation’s holiday year runs from January to December.
• The maximum amount of additional annual leave that any employee may "buy" in any one holiday year is one week (as per working shift pattern).
• An employee who wishes to buy some of their holiday entitlement must apply in writing to their line manager.
• Applications for buying entitlement must be received no later than 31st May 2019 for the current holiday year and no later than 15th December for the 2020 holiday year.
• The organisation reserves the right to refuse an employee’s application to buy holiday. In respect of a request to buy holiday, it may be necessary to refuse an employee’s request for operational or technical reasons related to their job role.
• Where an application has been received and approved, the employee will be notified in writing and the appropriate change to pay notified. The employee will then be given one week to confirm in writing that they wish to go ahead. Provided written confirmation of this is received from the employee, the new rate of pay will be applied on the first day of the next month.
• If an employee who has applied to buy holiday fails (following notification from the employer of the adjusted rate of pay) to provide written confirmation within one week that they would like to go ahead with the arrangement to buy holiday leave, the application will be cancelled.
• Additional holiday leave granted under this scheme must be taken within the holiday year in respect of which the application was received. If, having bought additional holiday, the employee fails to take it before the end of the relevant holiday year, the leave will be lost altogether. In these circumstances, no compensatory payment or salary adjustment will be made.
Adjustments to pay
Where an employee opts to buy annual holiday, this will result in a reduction of monthly salary either for the whole holiday year (when the request was processed before the end of the previous holiday year) or for part of the holiday year. The new monthly salary will be calculated and notified to the employee as soon as possible after the employee’s application to buy holiday has been received and approved.
The calculation for buying holiday will be arrived at by:
• dividing the employee’s annual salary by 52.14 to determine weekly pay;
• multiplying this figure by the number of weeks the employee wishes to buy;
• dividing this figure by the remaining number of months in the holiday year to arrive at the amount that will be deducted from the employee’s monthly salary;
• subtracting that figure from the employee’s normal monthly salary; and
• applying the new level of monthly pay from the agreed date through to the end of that holiday year.