Accruing holiday pay-paying staff early

brenno1 · 17-04-2021 7:46am #1

Hello all.

We run a payroll of 60 hourly paid staff (non salaried) and they are entitled to 8% holiday pay of hours worked.

Is it possible to pay this 8% weekly on top of their regular pay rate and then when it comes to their holidays they dont get paid I.e they have already been paid in advance for their holidays as they work their hours. It is up to them to manage their money then.

Apart from some employees pushing back, is there anything in the legislation stopping this practice I wonder. I cannot seem to find anything on it.

Thank you

L'prof · 17-04-2021 7:52am

brenno1 wrote: »

Hello all.

We run a payroll of 60 hourly paid staff (non salaried) and they are entitled to 8% holiday pay of hours worked.

Is it possible to pay this 8% weekly on top of their regular pay rate and then when it comes to their holidays they dont get paid I.e they have already been paid in advance for their holidays as they work their hours. It is up to them to manage their money then.

Apart from some employees pushing back, is there anything in the legislation stopping this practice I wonder. I cannot seem to find anything on it.

Thank you

Sounds like a nightmare to be honest. You’ll create an environment where nobody wants to take any holidays unless you planned on enforcing mandatory holidays

Why would you go down this route anyway? Surely once your systems are setup it makes no difference on your side?

17-04-2021 7:57am

People will just walk out on yous....as you will be essentially giving away half their holiday pay on tax,

Surely be a breeding ground for resentment??

L'prof · 17-04-2021 7:59am

[Deleted User] wrote: »

People will just walk out on yous....as you will be essentially giving away half their holiday pay on tax,

Surely be a breeding ground for resentment??

Tax will work out the same over the year

GalwayGrrrrrl · 17-04-2021 8:03am

The only job I’ve ever had that did that was when I worked casual hours in a second job -a few hours here and there. Although you say people can manage their money there will be some that can’t do that and will end up not being able to pay their rent/mortgage on the month they take 2 weeks leave.

brenno1 · 17-04-2021 8:08am

L'prof wrote: »

Sounds like a nightmare to be honest. You’ll create an environment where nobody wants to take any holidays unless you planned on enforcing mandatory holidays

Why would you go down this route anyway? Surely once your systems are setup it makes no difference on your side?

You would.be surprised how complex it gets trying to accrue holidays when people work different days/shifts and these hours are subject to change last minute not to mention sick leave and other forms of leave on top of that...its a nightmare.

I understand the tax if on a cumulative basis (which they are) shouldnt have much impact as they will be refunded any overpayment when they take their holidays so they are in a tax neutral position.

listermint · 17-04-2021 8:13am

brenno1 wrote: »

You would.be surprised how complex it gets trying to accrue holidays when people work different days/shifts and these hours are subject to change last minute not to mention sick leave and other forms of leave on top of that...its a nightmare.

I understand the tax if on a cumulative basis (which they are) shouldnt have much impact as they will be refunded any overpayment when they take their holidays so they are in a tax neutral position.

An excel file will do this at a click of a button. This is basic stuff really basic stuff. A master file coupled with a mandatory request system for taking any leave . If someone is maintaining the master file weekly it will take approximately 5 minutes work.

brenno1 · 17-04-2021 8:14am

GalwayGrrrrrl wrote: »

The only job I’ve ever had that did that was when I worked casual hours in a second job -a few hours here and there. Although you say people can manage their money there will be some that can’t do that and will end up not being able to pay their rent/mortgage on the month they take 2 weeks leave.

I am not suggesting for one minute this will be forced upon anyone and of course would liase with staff to see if it is workable before we did anything. At the moment they are resentful because they get confused on their accruals which are treble checked with alot of manpower to make sure they are ok( we are small company and dont have the resource for a fancy HR system). We are just trashing out if there is an easier way.

So back to my specific question, there is nothing legislatively preventing this if staff came on board. A couple of the staff actually asked for this.

cdeb · 17-04-2021 8:19am

brenno1 wrote: »

You would.be surprised how complex it gets trying to accrue holidays when people work different days/shifts and these hours are subject to change last minute not to mention sick leave and other forms of leave on top of that...its a nightmare.

If you can work out what to pay them, surely you can work out what to accrue? It's the same figure after all.

I have seen it done where a person was paid their holiday pay each week, so it is allowed, although not sure if you can force it on employees

brenno1 · 17-04-2021 8:24am

listermint wrote: »

An excel file will do this at a click of a button. This is basic stuff really basic stuff. A master file coupled with a mandatory request system for taking any leave . If someone is maintaining the master file weekly it will take approximately 5 minutes work.

"5 mins work"..."really basic stuff".....do you really think this is helpful?

Won't argue with u on this. You have no idea the complexities of the contracts of employment our staff (individual to each staff member) are on, all different hours(that arent standard and change and rechange from day to day), sick leave,maternity, parental and other leaves and ...we are struggling a bit during the pandemic and dont have the money to invest in a HR system to capture all these movements seamlessly. This is where the complexity comes in.

brenno1 · 17-04-2021 8:33am

cdeb wrote: »

If you can work out what to pay them, surely you can work out what to accrue? It's the same figure after all.

I have seen it done where a person was paid their holiday pay each week, so it is allowed, although not sure if you can force it on employees[/quote)

Its easy to work out 8% of hour paid in the weekly payroll and then forget about it as our obligations have been met. The staff understand this concept easily.

The complexity is 3 months down the line and we have accrued and then staff are querying everything , their sick pay accrual, maternity accrual, overtime, working less hours some weeks, they get totally bogged down and never understand how we arrive at their holiday entitlement. Believe me it wastes so many man hours tryng to explain. And we are accruing it correctly.

davindub · 17-04-2021 8:41am

Does your payroll package not calculate the holiday hours?

Mundo7976 · 17-04-2021 8:41am

brenno1 wrote: »

Believe me it wastes so many man hours tryng to explain. And we are accruing it correctly.

If it wastes that much time, and to save employee confusion/anger, why not just pay the holiday pay when they take holidays!

brenno1 · 17-04-2021 8:46am

Mundo7976 wrote: »

If it wastes that much time, and to save employee confusion/anger, why not just pay the holiday pay when they take holidays!

Thanks but have you even read the post? That is what we are doing!! But as they arent on standard contracts with hours varying each week they get totaly bogged down on their entitlements!

Mrs OBumble · 17-04-2021 9:56am

OP get proper legal advice.

I think Ireland has a law saying that you generally cannot do what you propose, but there are exceptions.

But I don't know the name or details of the law or the exceptions.

FWIW, I can easily see how your scenario is painful.

listermint · 17-04-2021 9:59am

brenno1 wrote: »

"5 mins work"..."really basic stuff".....do you really think this is helpful?

Won't argue with u on this. You have no idea the complexities of the contracts of employment our staff (individual to each staff member) are on, all different hours(that arent standard and change and rechange from day to day), sick leave,maternity, parental and other leaves and ...we are struggling a bit during the pandemic and dont have the money to invest in a HR system to capture all these movements seamlessly. This is where the complexity comes in.

With all due respect. If you have 60 staff and your finding this difficult then your Training or IT systems are inadequate. You need to make an investment in both asap. Doing so will actually save you time and money rather than hack short term fixes like paying people up front which will carry the same headaches, questions and if someone leaves you'll find back and forth issues constantly.

You know what you need to do.

ted1 · 17-04-2021 10:01am

brenno1 wrote: »

Hello all.

We run a payroll of 60 hourly paid staff (non salaried) and they are entitled to 8% holiday pay of hours worked.

Is it possible to pay this 8% weekly on top of their regular pay rate and then when it comes to their holidays they dont get paid I.e they have already been paid in advance for their holidays as they work their hours. It is up to them to manage their money then.

Apart from some employees pushing back, is there anything in the legislation stopping this practice I wonder. I cannot seem to find anything on it.

Thank you

Don’t be miserable. Pay them like ever other employer does. Holiday pay is designed so as to maintain a continuous flow of money. Paying them up front removes that and undoubtfully they’ll struggle when they do take holidays.

What will happen is that employees will forget it’s holiday pay as it’ll be considered regular pay . And you’ll be up in front of the labour court when they go looking for it.

Deeec · 17-04-2021 10:24am

I think if you implement this you will just cause more confusion. Alot of employees dont understand or look at their payslip. They wont realise they are being paid for their accrued hols in every payroll and then will be pee'd off when they do take hols and realise they receive no pay for weeks they are not working. You then will have the hassle of trying to explain this concept to them - some people will find this hard to understand and will think your ripping them off. Best to continue with your current set up.

secman · 17-04-2021 10:31am

It is illegal under the Organisation of Working Time Act, 1997 for an employer to pay an allowance in lieu of the minimum statutory holiday entitlement of an employee unless the employment relationship is terminated. In general, your annual leave is calculated on the basis of hours worked. Holiday time off and being paid whilst off is the premise of holiday pay !

mrslancaster · 17-04-2021 10:41am

Afaik you have to pay employees in advance of when they take holidays & it has to be at their normal weekly rate or equivalent.

Iirc employees with varying weekly amounts had hol pay calculated based on the average of the previous 13 weeks. Also most employment agencies with temp or casual staff used to pay the extra 8% weekly if the contracts were short term.

There could be a problem if an employees rate of pay was higher at the time they were taking annual leave & they had already been paid 8% of a lower pay rate earlier in the year.

dennyk · 17-04-2021 10:55am

This system could be interpreted as offering your employees extra pay in lieu of actually giving them their annual leave entitlement, which is not allowed (except when an employee leaves employment). Practically speaking, there is effectively no difference in complexity between calculating an employee's annual leave pay on a weekly basis and calculating and tracking the accrual of leave hours over the same period, so you might find it very difficult to justify such a system on that basis, and the WRC may well view it as a cheeky attempt to discourage your employees from taking their annual leave entitlement. Your best bet would be to run this by your solicitor and see what they have to say about it, but unless you want to go through the hassle of defending it to the WRC or the court (and possibly coming out the loser and being liable for penalties) when a disgruntled employee makes a complaint about the practice, I'd reconsider this plan.

Its easy to work out 8% of hour paid in the weekly payroll and then forget about it as our obligations have been met. The staff understand this concept easily.

The complexity is 3 months down the line and we have accrued and then staff are querying everything , their sick pay accrual, maternity accrual, overtime, working less hours some weeks, they get totally bogged down and never understand how we arrive at their holiday entitlement. Believe me it wastes so many man hours tryng to explain. And we are accruing it correctly.

"It's too hard to explain annual leave accrual to employees!" isn't likely to go over well with the WRC or the court. It's a concept that every employer in Ireland deals with. If you want to reduce the queries, get a payroll system where employees can monitor their own annual leave accrual, or just print it on their payslips each pay date.

Also, unless a significant number of your staff work significantly fewer than 1,365 hours in total per year (including hours spent on annual leave, maternity leave, parental leave, force majeure leave, adoptive leave or the first 13 weeks of carer’s leave), if you really want to simplify things, you'd be better off dropping this whole 8%-of-working-hours business entirely and just give everyone four weeks of leave per year. That should put an end to any confusion, and if it means a few employees might end up with slightly more annual leave than their legal minimum entitlement would be, that's a small enough price to pay for saving all those man-hours spent dealing with complex annual leave calculations.

mrslancaster · 17-04-2021 10:56am

curious about the payment in advance bit of the OWT & others experience of this.

I used to work in a place who just ignored that rule. All employees were paid monthly in arrears & when they took a week or two annual leave they still just got their monthly salary, no extra payment in advance. Anyone else like that?

Deeec · 17-04-2021 10:58am

mrslancaster wrote: »

curious about the payment in advance bit of the OWT & others experience of this.

I used to work in a place who just ignored that rule. All employees were paid monthly in arrears & when they took a week or two annual leave they still just got their monthly salary, no extra payment in advance. Anyone else like that?

I think most people on a salary are paid like this. Everywhere I have worked this is the way it has operated. Easy to understand and operate.

Mrs OBumble · 17-04-2021 11:06am

mrslancaster wrote: »

curious about the payment in advance bit of the OWT & others experience of this.

I used to work in a place who just ignored that rule. All employees were paid monthly in arrears & when they took a week or two annual leave they still just got their monthly salary, no extra payment in advance. Anyone else like that?

Pretty much everywhere does this, including places with hourly wage employees, ie not just salaried.

The in-advance thing is a throwback from the days when.people were paid in cash, and if you weren't physically at work there was no way to get your money. It's not required now people are paid to their bank accounts, and ATMS are widely available.

dennyk · 17-04-2021 11:07am

I suspect the "pay in advance" bit is to prevent employers from using annual leave as an excuse to delay paying employees who are paid more frequently (e.g. weekly). In the jobs I've had here which were salaried and paid monthly in arrears, I've always just received my normal pay on the normal pay date for months in which I took annual leave. I doubt any employee would complain if they're receiving their normal pay amount on their normal pay dates when taking leave, but if a place is paying employees weekly and is going "OK, now, go off on your two-week holiday and you'll be paid for it when you get back!", that's going to cause some hassles for employees who are living pay date to pay date, so that's likely to lead to a complaint.

Kewreeuss · 17-04-2021 11:21am

I had prepared a long reply on how to do it with all the warnings involved.Before I posted it I checked to see what other replies came in.
The other posters re correct. You are making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Forget about the 8% go with a 13 week average it just involves one excel spreadsheet if your payroll package doesn’t do it, and pay their holidays as they fall. You have no worries then about the WRC.. ideal opportunity to Create an annual leave policy to ensure people take their leave.
Create separate pay elements for sick leave hols, maternity leave hols and other leave, so the employee can see what they are getting paid for. Keep notes on the calculations. Other leave covers parental, etc.

Paying salaried employees is much easier.
I got the impression that OPs employees were paid hourly, which is a whole different ballgame and the simplification of fixed pay workers is just not possible.

cdeb · 17-04-2021 12:36pm

brenno1 wrote: »

Its easy to work out 8% of hour paid in the weekly payroll and then forget about it as our obligations have been met. The staff understand this concept easily.

The complexity is 3 months down the line and we have accrued and then staff are querying everything , their sick pay accrual, maternity accrual, overtime, working less hours some weeks, they get totally bogged down and never understand how we arrive at their holiday entitlement. Believe me it wastes so many man hours tryng to explain. And we are accruing it correctly.

I can see where you're coming from, but for me the bit in bold is key. Don't forget about it. Each week, keep a simple excel log for each staff

Joe Bloggs
Wk 1 worked 30 hours => 2.4 hours' annual leave (balance 2.4)
Wk 2 worked 40 hours => 3.2 hours' annual leave (bal 5.6)
Wk 3 didn't work; paid 5 hours' annual leave => bal 0.6 hours

Each week will tie into the payslip, so queries should be straightforward.

I have seen it done the way you're suggesting, but that was by agreement, and as others hint too, I don't know if you can force that on people. I think your best fix here ultimately is to grasp the nettle and log hours by staff. It's the most common in my (fairly limited) experience.

brenno1 · 17-04-2021 1:07pm

listermint wrote: »

With all due respect. If you have 60 staff and your finding this difficult then your Training or IT systems are inadequate. You need to make an investment in both asap. Doing so will actually save you time and money rather than hack short term fixes like paying people up front which will carry the same headaches, questions and if someone leaves you'll find back and forth issues constantly.

You know what you need to do.

With all due respect, you have no idea about our business, our finances etc and our skillset and the fixes you suggest are not practical for us at the moment, the pandemic has really impacted our business to the point we are just about hanging on. And even a with a top notch IT system in place im not sure the issue will be fixed.. Its more the people element of trying to explain their entitlements to them, we actually manage to calculate it with the resources we have but its their lack of understanding of the calculations when things move from the standard that is the issue. We are trying to simplify the process so they easily understand it within all legal requirements and only if the employee would want it.

But thanks everyone for the constructive feedback (wil certainly take on board some of the good advice) and the people who actually understand how messy this sometimes gets in a non standard payroll.

brenno1 · 17-04-2021 1:13pm

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

OP get proper legal advice.

I think Ireland has a law saying that you generally cannot do what you propose, but there are exceptions.

But I don't know the name or details of the law or the exceptions.

Thanks and agree I think i need to get the proper legal advice before we could implement this. 2 staff have actually asked for this which prompted the discussion in our business. I think if anything moves on it it would be optional for staff to opt in or out. I would have no interest in trying to make it compulsory.

FWIW, I can easily see how your scenario is painful.

Yes it is unfortunatley.:-(

brenno1 · 17-04-2021 2:42pm

ted1 wrote: »

Don’t be miserable. Pay them like ever other employer does. Holiday pay is designed todo as to maintain a continuous flow of money. Paying them up front removes that and undoubtfully they’ll struggle when they do take holidays.

What will happen is that employees will forget it’s holiday pay as it’ll be considered regular pay . And you’ll be up in front of the labour court when they go looking for it.

"Don't be miserable". Do you actual read posts before you make such throwaway statements? Why would it be miserable by asking if its possible and legal to pay people up front...ie give them money. Surely being miserable would be holding onto it and trying not to pay it?
It is nothing about being miserable, it is about seeing if there is a solution that satisfies the employees so they don't get so confused 3 months down the line when they cannot understand how it was calculated.

As ive said a few times now i have no interest in trying to force this on anyone, it would be optional for anyone who wanted it ( as a couple of people already asked for it). I was just trying to ascertain if it was legal to do so but obviously you failed to read any of these points.

ted1 · 17-04-2021 8:35pm

brenno1 wrote: »

"Don't be miserable". Do you actual read posts before you make such throwaway statements? Why would it be miserable by asking if its possible and legal to pay people up front...ie give them money. Surely being miserable would be holding onto it and trying not to pay it?
It is nothing about being miserable, it is about seeing if there is a solution that satisfies the employees so they don't get so confused 3 months down the line when they cannot understand how it was calculated.

As ive said a few times now i have no interest in trying to force this on anyone, it would be optional for anyone who wanted it ( as a couple of people already asked for it). I was just trying to ascertain if it was legal to do so but obviously you failed to read any of these points.

It’s miserable as you are to cheap to pay for a payroll system that can easily do the system.

If you can’t calculate holiday pay. How do you know what holidays they are entitled too?

Accruing holiday pay-paying staff early

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