In fact, for the month of December, i'll be working for only 15 days in total, as i'll be clearing my annual leave for the year.
I still have 5 days of unconsumed annual leave for this year, and i think i was already considered lucky, for i had actually taken quite a lot of leave for my wedding and house moving. For some of my colleagues in my department, their unconsumed leave can go up to more than 10 days.
Before i carry on with my rambling, here's our company's
The corporate policy on Annual Leave dictates that employees should fully utilize their entitlement of annual leave during the year of entitlement.
No annual leave may be accumulated and brought forward to the following year. Annual leave not utilized during the financial year will be forfeited in accordance.
In order to give the employees sufficient notice and time to use the already carried forward annual leave, unutilized leave may be carried forward as follows:
For year 2007, unutilized annual leave entitlement may be carried forward till June 30, 2008 for managers and others. For senior management, unutilized annual leave may be carried forward till December 31, 2008;
For year 2008, 50% of 2008’s unutilized annual leave entitlement may be carried forward till June 30, 2009 with prior approval from the Company;
Effective 2009 onwards, annual leave entitlement will be forfeited on December 31st each year with no carry forward leave.
Uh huh, despite having worked like a dog for the whole year and unable to take leave at our will because of work commitments, the company's stand is just so clear and simply, "it's your own problem for not planning your annual leave properly". Well, as if we can actually plan for anything in this job... *snicker*
And may i add that there is absolutely no exception to the above policy, so do not even think about negotiating for any grace period. Silly me for even asking my boss about it.
As we do not have any employee handbook, and i couldn't recall what the policy was, i approached big boss and asked him if we could carry forward our unconsumed leave. He wasn't so sure as well, so he told me that he would check it out with our HR.
After a while, he sent an email to our department with the above policy attached and stating:
Attached please find the recently announced annual leave policy that you have agreed to.
Then i finally recalled that HR did indeed distribute a letter to everyone of us some time in the middle of the year. They asked all of us to read and sign on it.
Frankly, that particular sentence in my boss's email did not go down well with me. Heeelllloooo, a policy that we "have agreed to"???? I do not recall anyone asking us if "this is ok"; instead we were simply told to "sign on it"... as if we have a choice to say NO???
I do not blame my boss for that, for i know full well that this was exactly what the HR told him when he asked them about it. Why am i so sure? Well, similar thing happened before (and i think i've blogged about it before).
When i first joined the company, i asked about off-in-lieu for those who travelled and worked during public holidays (again, since we do not have any employee handbook). The reply from HR was a big NO, with a comment along the line of "we do give day off during X'mas and CNY, so those already compensated for the lost public holidays".
Then recently, we received an email from HR:
The Company is declaring half-day off in the afternoon on 24th December 2008 (Wednesday) and full day off on 2nd January 2009 (Friday) so that you can spend time with your loved ones and also compensate some employees who have to travel for business during public holidays during the year.
Ooookkkkaaayyyy, so we are making this official, aren't we? Seriously, I do appreciate the company giving us off during festive season, but using this as the reason for not giving any off-in-lieu is so so so so so lame!
C'mon, if you wanna give us off, just give. Don't make it as a way to shut us up for being disgruntled with the lack of compensation for those working during public holidays. If you wanna make it this way, then ask those who never need to travel to return to work lah! Why are they having off as well?
Public holidays are gazetted and our entitlement. If this company does not think it is necessary to pay us back for our loss in enjoying the public holidays as the other staff, then it's because the HR policy sucks. It only makes matter worse by rebutting us with those even more sucky excuses and uncalled-for remarks.
Gee, don't get me started with the HR in this company. I could really write a thesis on it. I think i'd better stop here, or this can really go on and on and on.
Anyway, i'm just not gonna get my unconsumed annual leave halved by carrying it to next year. I've already lost so much personal time in business trips, and i'm not gonna be so stupid to let them deprived me of more. Even if i'm not going anywhere in December, i'd rather take leave and work from home, than to lose more entitlements that we've already lost.
