Is there a regulation on how much in advance an employee should book annual leave?

Is it ALL your holidays, or just all holidays you've carried over from last year? I've heard of internal policies that require all vacation days carried over from the previous year to be booked before the end of March.

Yes it would be highly unusual for them to ask you to reserve your entire annual leave by a date so early in the year.

I just wonder if there's a misinterpretation there. I would tell my team to book all their holidays in the system before the end of March for example. But by that I don't mean use up all their days. I mean book any/all their holidays that they have planned in their heads already, so we know where we are.

If you refuse, then they may just decide to allocate leave days to you.

Which they certainly can do, especially if you have already been given the chance to express preferences but declined.

What does your contract say about A/L? In Ireland if you are working full time you are entitled to 4 weeks annual leave plus the 9 public holidays. (I think there’s 10 this year).

But ultimately your employer can say when you take those weeks.

For example you could be working for a company that actually closes for a set two weeks in the summer, 4 days from Easter Tuesday till the following Monday , 27 to 31 December. That would leave you with only 2 floating days to play around with.

Unless your contract states otherwise then your employer isn’t being unreasonable asking you to suggest in March what your annual leave dates are between now and next April.

Editing here:

Ive reread the thread and I see that your contract states a notice period for annual leave.

Under the Terms and Conditions Act any change to your contract needs to be in writing with two weeks notice. Of course you can object to any change to your contract but the company are normally inclined to go ahead anyway.

If they do go ahead even if you object then you could make a complaint to WRC. But do you want to be bothered with that?

Not in my experience. People with school going children try to book during the school holidays. Generally no one else wants that time as it's so expensive. Generally if anyone else applied for holidays in that time they got it as they had very good reasons.

My company also asks us to put our main holidays in the calender by the end of March. But it's changeable later, its really just to make sure there is cover at all times.

I'm pretty sure that there's a legal obligation on employers to consider their employees family circumstances. IMHO that should include not just children but also elderly parents and relatives, companion animals, and social / ethnic community obligations

However consider is the word. It's not an absolute obligation to give breeders what they want and make everyone else work around them. In some workplaces, people have to make compromises. In which case, everyone should have to make some - but ideally as few as possib.e.

If employers want to employ parents then, yeah, they need to make the employment attractive to parents. This isn't a legal requirement; just common sense. A decision to disregard the concerns of parents in the way you organise the employment is a decision to focus your hiring efforts on non-parents only. That limits the pool of prospective employees, and you would need to have a pretty good business case to support such a decision.

You should ask your boss what happens if you subsequently want to change your holidays?

I suspect you will be allowed change, provided it doesn't cause a scheduling issue.

So you're no worse off than if you didn't select holidays now, and simply applied later.

I think they are just trying to avoid a situation where too many people look for holidays later and get denied because someone else is already off that week, and the employee fees it's unfair because they were denied at the last minute with little time to pick new dates. But asking for you to choose now, they at least bring the date clashes to light now when people have time to consider their options. But if you don't choose now, or just pick random dates now and change later, you are in the same boat. You might get the dates you want or you might not, but you won't know until later in the year (when you ask for the dates).

In Ireland you can legally tell someone when their holiday is.

Most companies however don't excercise that right, which is the right thing to do.

Many companies - production plants in particular - will be closed for two weeks of summer and there is nothing the employee can do about it.

Similarly the employer can just dictate when you take holidays, but most will not do it and will accommodate your needs, but there is nothing stopping them from telling you when to take them.

This misconception illustrates the point I'm making exactly.

It is not illegal to terminate an employee who is unable to do the job. This includes an employee whose state of health is such that they cannot do the job. Employers are reluctant to do this, both because most employers are decent people and because dismissing, rehiring and retraining is expensive and disruptive, but it's not illegal. And it does happen, especially when people are chronically ill.

But, despite the risk, the parents of young children do take "sick leave" to discharge caring responsibilities towards those children. Even apart from the fact that taking sick leave when you're not actually sick is a disciplinary matter, taking lots of sick leave does have implications for your career progression and potentially your employment, but they do it anyway. Why? Because they don't have a lot of choice, basically.

How should employers react? Well, if you value the employees and wish to retain them, you will try to make it possible for them to work for you, and discharge their parenting/caring responsibilities, without having to lie about it and jeopardise their career/employment. That's not wokeness or politically correctness; it's common sense and old-fashioned economic self-interest. Hence, flexible hours; part-time work; job-sharing, etc.

You don't make these available only to parents; that would be illegal. But the parents of young children will disproportionately avail of them, because they have particular needs which these arrangements can meet.

Employers who don't do things like this will find that they lose a disproportionate amount of mid-career employees, particularly women, who gravitate towards workplaces that do do things like this. That's a considerable loss of investment in training and developing staff.

When I was younger I didn't mind taking my holidays out of school time and facilitate their needs. A few deals done.

Broke down with one colleague when I booked holidays for something special to me and they went mental.

I just plan and book earlier now. Go jump I was first in. Exceptions of course. I don't mind altering days if needed and I'm not losing money.

Sometimes people don't cop on its not just their colleague that's being effected.

From my own experience you are always well off to get your holiday request in as soon as possible. Maximizes the chance that you will be able to take the exact days that you wish.