Changes to annual leave laws?
Our 13 employee company is updating the work rules to follow recent changes to the law, as I understand it. I'm being told that we must use 5 days of annual leave per year, or the company can specify 5 days for any individual employee who doesn't take any. That seems fine, but the nuance is that those 5 days must come from the pool of annual leave received for that year. Which means, you cannot roll over 100% of your annual leave to a second year any more. Many people typically get their 20 new days, and use 20 days throughout the year, and keep rolling over 20 days, always using from the "older" pool of days, but I'm being told this is no longer legal. Has anybody else had similar changes in their company rules recently?
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Yes, my company did a similar change this year, but they didn't have this bit about it having to come out of the current year's days, only that there had to be at least 5 days off. They basically just designated 5 weekend days as days of PTO to ensure they're complying with the rule.
ITS_A_GUNDAAAM 2 points · Dec 2025 · 関東・東京都
That’s pretty much what my old company did. Additionally if there was a holiday on a Tuesday or Thursday, then they’d designate the Monday or Friday as a ‘company holiday’ to give people a four-day weekend and make a Saturday a ‘work day but you should really really really take PTO on that day instead’ day. They actually gave us like an extra five days PTO than are legally necessary for that purpose.
Ark42 [OP] 1 points · Dec 2025 · 関東・東京都
I think it's a separate system to pre-designate some days as using everybody's PTO, and having it apply to the whole company. I know some companies do that with Obon for example.
This law (new-ish) that I'm talking about is for companies that don't do that. If an employee isn't using any of their days off at all, and the end of the period is approaching, the company can just make that one employee take off 5 days all at once now. Everybody else would be working like normal on those days.
ITS_A_GUNDAAAM 2 points · Dec 2025 · 関東・東京都
Gotcha, that makes sense!