At the beginning of this month my agency contacted me and presumably all my colleagues informing us that the payroll was being outsourced. The message assured us this was still PAYE and definitely not umbrella, but that we now had the option to have holiday pay included and could take this option by filling out a form.
My first thought was to take the rolled up option as I had struggled to get paid for my holidays particularly last year. I hadn’t taken my full holiday entitlement and was in the use it or lose situation. This isn’t unusual for me, approximately twenty years ago when working for a small engineering company I was running the Laser shop, almost single handedly. My employer informed me at the end of November that I hadn’t taken a single days holiday that year apart from bank holidays! The mortgage was big and the kids were small and I’d just cracked on. Being a reasonably decent chap he asked if it would be okay to give me a weeks holiday pay every pay day in December instead of in a lump at the end of the month. Not a problem was my response.
Back to the present(ish), I definitely hadn’t taken and/or been paid for my full holiday entitlement for 19/20 and 20/21 was going the same way. Admittedly lax on my part, but after some insistence the agency decided I was owed 186 hrs of HP over the two years and in a similar way to above they spread it over the last couple of months to the tune of around £3k!
Not sure if I would have received it had we not been in the present situation.
The agency are certainly putting the pressure on now to do more shifts, I’ve just had an easy month, only did three days the week before last and four the week before that, by choice.
Thinking now is the time to max out and really take what’s on offer over the next two months.
I don’t consider myself to be a workaholic but have never been able to resist just taking the money!