MAIN PRINCIPLES

1. Key and Community Lifestyles view time away from work as critical in order to maintain a work – life balance and individual wellbeing.
2. All employees should be supported to use their Annual Leave and to try to ensure that this is spread out over the year.
3. There must be transparency, equity and fairness when allocating, calculating and managing annual leave.

INTRODUCTION (DO’S AND DON’TS)

1. In line with our Deployment Policy, Annual Leave should be requested prior to the rota going out wherever possible.
2. It is the role of all employees to request Annual Leave and to give as much notice as possible.
3. It is the role of the line-manager to authorise and manage Annual Leave and this includes ensuring that not too many people are off at once, leaving the service short of cover.
4. If an employee chooses not to request annual leave, then, following discussion with the worker, the manager has the right to allocate periods of annual leave. Any outstanding entitlement remaining at the end of the year (over the permitted 5 days) will be lost.
5. Prior to authorising Annual Leave managers must ensure that the worker has sufficient Annual Leave remaining in their balance to cover their request.
6. All Annual Leave must be put onto Evolve in a timeous manner and Annual Leave balances checked on a regular basis.
7. Allowing workers to go into a negative Annual Leave balance must not happen.
8. The Annual Leave that someone takes off and is paid for must equate with the Annual Leave that is taken from their Annual Leave balance.
9. If a manager is, for whatever reason, unable to allocate all of a worker’s contracted hours in any one pay period, they should never be made to take Annual Leave to cover this.
10. No-one can be on Annual Leave and working at the same time.
11. Annual leave should not be allocated on a rota’d day off. (See the “Rest Periods” section of the Deployment Policy for more information about rota’d days off.)

SECTION ONE

Planned Annual Leave (Requested Prior To The Rota Being Finalised)

1. Full week Annual Leave.

Given that Annual Leave should be requested before the rota is finalised, most Annual Leave should be regarded as planned Annual Leave.   Given this, the calculation for a full week’s Annual Leave would be based on the person’s contracted hours. e.g.

If a person has a 39 hour contract and they have one week’s Annual Leave, they would take 39 hours Annual Leave.

If a person has a 30 hour contract and they take one week’s Annual Leave, they would take 30 hours Annual Leave.

1. Part week Annual Leave

The norm for a planned ‘part week’ annual leave is that each day counts for one fifth of a person’s contracted hours as follows:

1. Part week Annual Leave - Exception

A small number of our workers, essentially those who have very small contracts, work their contracted hours in a very set way and will therefore know their work pattern ahead of the rota being issued. In these cases, the number of hours of Annual Leave taken will be the number of hours the person was due to work on that day e.g.

• 8 hour contracted worker, works their 8 hours contract over one specific day, Annual Leave on that day would be 8 hours.
• 16 hour contracted worker, works their contracted hours over two set days, one 6 hours, the other 10 hours. 6 hours Annual Leave would be taken if the Annual Leave day fell on the 6 hour day and 10 hours Annual Leave taken if it was on the 10 hour day

The hours that are deducted / paid for Annual Leave will be the same as the hours that are taken off the person’s Annual Leave balance.

SECTION TWO

Unplanned (Short Notice) Annual Leave  - (Requested After The Rota Has Been Finalised and Issued)

Unplanned, short notice Annual Leave should not be the norm, but it can and does happen for a number of reasons. In this situation, workers will know what their work pattern will be for the Annual Leave days requested.      

1. Full week Annual Leave

The number of hours Annual Leave taken will be the number of hours the person was due to work that week.

1. Part week Annual Leave

The number of hours Annual Leave taken will be the number of hours the person was due to work on those days.

If the request for time off falls on a shift which can be identified as being extra hours rather than contracted hours, the worker has the option of simply dropping those hours rather than use Annual Leave.