Drawing up a vacation schedule is the responsibility of every organization. Usually it is developed in advance: 2 weeks before the next calendar year and approved by order of the boss. According to the provisions of Art. 123 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, compliance with the vacation schedule is mandatory for the employer and employee. In this regard, many HR specialists have a question: are changes to the vacation schedule allowed, what documents need to be prepared in this case? How to make changes to the schedule when rescheduling vacation? How to adjust the schedule when hiring a new employee? Let's figure it out.
On what grounds can you postpone your vacation?
At the request of the employer, an employee’s vacation can be postponed in the following cases:
- an important urgent task that can only be completed by a specific specialist;
- company restructuring (merger, split-up, re-profiling, significant staff reduction, etc.);
- introduction of innovative work methods, installation of new equipment, replacement of software and computing systems;
- unscheduled inspections of the company’s activities by fiscal or other regulatory government agencies;
- urgent business trip due to production needs;
- illness of a manager whose job responsibilities can only be transferred to a limited number of people (in particular, to the deputy head of a department or department).
In these cases, the transfer must be agreed upon with the employee. The employee must reflect the absence of objections regarding the clarification of the date or period of rest on the order to postpone the vacation. Or you can draw up a separate document where he directly expresses his consent to the transfer of his vacation.
Good reasons for changing the vacation schedule may arise not only from the employer, but also from the subordinate. Among the reasons taken into account that require the postponement of an employee's rest time are usually financial, family or personal circumstances. These include: illness, possible maternity leave, the need to rest during certain periods (for example, simultaneously with a spouse).
The head of the company has the right to independently determine whether the grounds for postponing the rest period are significant. It often happens that an application to change the vacation schedule remains unsatisfied. Then the employee goes on vacation during the period that was originally planned. Also see "Vacation Schedule".
How to create an order
There is no legally approved form for such an order, so it is drawn up in free form, using the standard structure for orders. The document must contain the following information:
- Name and information about the organization.
- Name, number and date of preparation of the document.
- The reason for postponing vacation and making changes to the vacation schedule.
- An instruction to reschedule the start date of the vacation, the full name of the employee who needs to reschedule the vacation, and the date to which it needs to be rescheduled.
- Instruction to make changes to the vacation schedule, full name of the employee who was assigned this task.
- Signatures of the head of the organization and employees mentioned in the order.
We make adjustments according to the rules
In practice, a document drawn up in advance can rarely remain unchanged. Sometimes situations arise that require adjustments to be made. This especially applies to large organizations. Russian legislation is silent on whether it is possible to make changes to the vacation schedule. There are no corresponding norms either in the Labor Code of the Russian Federation or in the instructions themselves for filling out such documents.
However, practicing HR specialists are confident that clarifications are necessary for a number of reasons. Firstly, the irrelevance of information in the schedule may lead to claims from labor inspectors. Providing holidays outside the established dates may result in penalties. Secondly, unscheduled absence of employees can jeopardize the uninterrupted operation of the company, as well as create problems for the accounting department, which creates and maintains a guideline for reserves for payment of relevant expenses.
Adjustments to the schedule must be approved by the manager. For this purpose, an order is drawn up to change the vacation schedule, on the basis of which the corresponding clarifications are entered into the unified form No. T-7, approved on 01/05/2004 by Resolution of the State Statistics Committee No. 1. See also “Order on approval of the vacation schedule according to Form T-7”.
So please note: the law does not establish the rules necessary to comply in these cases. However, depending on the specific situation, the schedule can be modified in different ways.
Vacation schedule
The Labor Code of the Russian Federation introduces the obligation to draw up a vacation schedule for employees and places it on the employer.
Art. 123 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation explains that such a schedule is a document drawn up annually and approved by order of the manager. The vacation schedule has a number of features:
- The document is drawn up and approved no later than the last 2 weeks before the new year.
- Taking into account the opinion of the trade union committee (if there is one) when registering it is a mandatory procedure.
- Once the annual schedule has been approved, the enterprise administration is obliged to adhere to it all year, just like the employees.
- When creating a schedule, you need to take into account that some categories of employees have advantages when choosing vacation time. You can learn about how leave is granted and what the procedure is for this in the article Procedure for granting leave under the Labor Code.
The schedule can be drawn up in free form, but the T-7 form is often used, approved. Resolution of the State Statistics Committee of Russia dated January 5, 2004 No. 1, since it already provides for all the points required by labor law.
The vacation schedule must be approved by the head of the company. You can do this in 2 ways:
- Issue a separate order approving the document, as well as other related actions for its execution, signed by the manager.
- Provide an approval stamp in the schedule itself (as in the already mentioned T-7 form). In this case, an order to approve the vacation schedule will not be needed.
New employee hired
If new people join the company during the year, there is no need to make changes to the current schedule. The employer has the right to provide such employees with the opportunity to rest at any time, if this does not cause damage to the organization and its business processes. This is done on the basis of a written statement from interested parties.
If an organization nevertheless decides to document a change in the vacation schedule when hiring a new employee, it is reasonable to draw up an addition to the already existing vacation schedule. It is usually drawn up in the form of a separate document in the prescribed form. In this case, in the “Notes” column, you must indicate the date the new employee started working.
Can an employer change the vacation schedule?
A situation often arises when it is necessary to change the vacation schedule, since the document is accepted in advance for a long period and there is no way to take into account special circumstances, business needs, employee illness, etc.
The current legislation does not contain any rules indicating how and how changes and additions to the vacation schedule should be formalized. However, personnel service employees are of the opinion that registration of additions and changes is necessary for a number of reasons:
- The irrelevance of the information specified in the vacation schedule may entail the imposition of penalties by the labor inspectorate, namely: the fact that it is provided outside the approved and agreed upon dates (Article 5.27 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation).
- Unscheduled absence of workers from their workplace can have a significant impact on the company's production process.
- Uncoordinated leave can interfere with the work of the accounting department, which in this case creates reserves for payment of relevant expenses.
You can modify your vacation schedule in several ways:
- Making an addition to an existing document. This method is most convenient when hiring a new employee.
- Making changes to an existing schedule. This method is convenient when rescheduling an employee’s planned vacation date.
In any case, it is necessary to take into account that in order to change the vacation time of a particular employee, his consent is required (see Articles 124, 125 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation), and sometimes an administrative act of management dedicated not to changing the schedule, but to its reason (for example, an order to recall from vacation ).
Changing your planned holiday date
All other adjustments to the schedule are usually associated with the fact that the employee is forced to rest earlier or later than the deadline set for him. In this case, changes to the vacation schedule in 2021 should be made in the following scheme: the planned start date of the event, entered in column 6, is not changed, and all necessary information about postponing the start of the vacation or changing its duration is reflected in columns 8–10.
Please note that not all HR employees know how to make changes to the vacation schedule in accordance with the law. In particular, many of them forget about the provisions of Art. 123 Labor Code of the Russian Federation. It says that if an employee has the right to go on vacation in a certain month, then 2 weeks before the expected start of the vacation he must write an application indicating a specific date. This is what needs to be entered in column 8.
The requirement that employees are required to notify the employer of the start date of vacation no later than half a month in advance should preferably be enshrined in an internal company regulation - an order or directive. Also, nothing prevents you from introducing a corresponding clause into the wage regulations. Moreover, all company employees are required to carefully study these documents. The same applies to the order to amend the vacation schedule: all interested employees must familiarize themselves with it and sign it.
Keep in mind that some employees of the organization have the right to take vacation at any time suitable for them. These include:
- teenagers under 18 years of age;
- part-time workers; they rest at the same time at their main and additional places of work;
- employees planning to go on maternity leave;
- husbands whose wives are on maternity or child care leave;
- employees with two or more children of a certain age (under 12 years);
- honorary donors;
- military spouses vacationing at the same time as their husbands;
- some categories of Chernobyl victims;
- employees who adopted a baby under three months of age;
- other categories in accordance with the provisions of Art. 322 Labor Code of the Russian Federation.
See also “What types of holidays are there?”
If an employee belonging to one of these categories decides to postpone the planned start date of the vacation, the vacation schedule is not changed at the initiative of the employee. In this case, it is enough to enter the relevant data into the existing document:
- in column 8 - reflect information about the employee’s application with a request to postpone the rest period;
- in column 9 - indicate the new date of the proposed vacation;
- in column 10 - write down the category of employee who has the right to use vacation at any time.
It will not be possible to find an approved example of changing the vacation schedule in regulatory documents. Therefore, for your convenience, below is an approximate form of the adjusted schedule, which is informative and convenient for work.
Reasons for making changes to the vacation schedule
Changes to the vacation schedule are made in connection with the transfer of vacation to another date. Transfer of vacation is possible (Part 1 of Article 124 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation):
- At the request of the employee.
The basis for the transfer is a written statement from the employee addressed to the manager. In it, the employee indicates the reason for the transfer and the date to which the vacation is shifted. If the employer does not object to the transfer, he signs the application and issues an appropriate order.
- Due to illness of an employee on the eve of or during vacation.
The basis is sick leave. An employee may request an extension of the current leave for the duration of illness or transfer it to another date, but no later than 12 months after the end of the year.
- In connection with the recall of an employee from leave due to production needs.
The basis is an order to recall an employee from vacation. An employee can only be recalled with his written consent. An employee can take unused vacation days at any time during the current or next year.
It is not allowed to recall from vacation a minor employee, a pregnant woman, or workers in harmful and dangerous industries. If an employee refuses to take leave, he cannot be forced.
- Due to violation of the deadline for payment of vacation pay or notification of the employee about the start of vacation.
Providing leave to employees hired after the approval of the leave schedule.
The vacation schedule for 2021 was approved on December 15, 2015.
Is it required to draw up and approve a vacation schedule for employees who arrived during 2021 (in January, March, etc.), or will they go on vacation in 2021 on a personal request?
March 22, 2016
On this issue we take the following position:
When hiring new employees, the employer should make appropriate changes to the vacation schedule.
Justification for the position:
The order of provision of annual paid vacations is determined annually in accordance with the vacation schedule approved by the employer, taking into account the opinion of the elected body of the primary trade union organization no later than two weeks before the start of the calendar year in the manner established by Art. 372 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation for the adoption of local regulations (part one of Article 123 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation). Thus, in accordance with the requirements of the law, any organization must approve a vacation schedule no later than December 17 of each year, in accordance with which the priority and time of granting vacations to the organization’s employees for the next year are determined.
At the same time, after the vacation schedule is approved, new employees can be hired into the organization. According to the general rule established by Art. 122 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the right to use vacation for the first year of work arises for an employee after six months of continuous work with a given employer. In addition, certain categories of employees, in cases provided for by the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and other federal laws, are granted annual paid leave at their request at a time convenient for them, that is, before the expiration of six months from the date of employment with a given employer (Article 123 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation ). Thus, in practice, a situation may arise when an employee hired after the approval of the vacation schedule must be granted vacation, but it is not provided for in the approved schedule.
In this case, there are no official clarifications on the issue of documenting the provision of leave. Experts express different points of view regarding this situation.
For example, there is an opinion that if there is a large staff or with a high level of staff turnover, leave can be granted based on the employee’s application, without supplementing or changing the approved leave schedule (see article by O.N. Rusakova “How to avoid a labor dispute over leave? "Salary, N 6, June 2007).
An employer who shares this point of view and acts in accordance with it may not change the approved vacation schedule. In this case, the parties must agree in writing on the period for granting leave. This can be done directly in the employment contract or formalized by affixing the visa of the head of the organization to the employee’s application, in which he expresses his wishes about the time of vacation. However, in our opinion, in this case the employer will not comply with the requirements of labor legislation on the procedure for providing annual paid leave.
It seems to us that the most correct position is shared by the majority of specialists, according to which the issue of the date of the administration’s vacation must be decided upon when hiring, after which appropriate changes and additions must be made to the vacation schedule (see the article by V. Egorov “Unification on the verge of fiction” New accounting , issue 8, August 2004; article by E.A. Katko “Basic annual paid leave” Tax Bulletin, N 9, September 2006; Question: “Since the beginning of 2007, we have been hiring new employees. What should be duration of their vacation this year? Should they be included in the vacation schedule?" (Personnel. Labor Law for Personnel Officers, No. 6, June 2007); article by I. Semenchenko “Vacation Schedule" (HR magazine, No. 7 , July 2015)).
The position expressed on this issue by representatives of Rostrud is contradictory. Thus, in a number of cases, representatives of the department indicate that the vacation schedule, in principle, regulates the provision of annual paid vacations in relation only to the second and subsequent years of work of employees. Based on this, it is not necessary to make any changes to the vacation schedule in relation to a newly hired employee, since the employer is obliged to provide such an employee with vacation for the first working year after the end of the six-month period (see the answer from the head of the department of supervision and control on issues of remuneration of the Federal Service for Labor labor and employment of I.I. Dudoladov in the magazine “Simplified”, N 10, October 2013, as well as the answer to the Question: Employed on December 20, 2013. After 6 months of work in this organization, I wrote a leave application, but the director regional unit does not want to issue a visa. The HR department told me that I am not included in the vacation schedule. What should I do? How can I go on vacation? (Rostrud information portal “Online Inspection. RF”, September 2015)). In other explanations, representatives of Rostrud indicate the employer’s obligation to make appropriate changes to the vacation schedule after hiring a new employee (see the answer to the Question: Is the employer obliged to provide an employee, upon his application, with paid leave after 6 months of work in the organization, if this employee has not been included in the vacation schedule, because he started working after it was drawn up? (Rostrud information portal “Online Inspection. RF”, September 2015); answer to the Question: Does an employee have the right to use the first part of vacation after 6 months of time worked? without a vacation schedule, since he was hired after the approval of the vacation schedule and without the consent of the employer, since he is not satisfied that the employee wants to quit after this vacation? (Rostrud information portal “Online Inspectorate. Russian Federation,” September 2015) ).
In our opinion, when granting leave to an employee, the employer must be guided by the general norms of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation establishing the procedure for granting leave. If you strictly follow the provisions of Art. 123 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, according to which vacations are provided to employees in accordance with the vacation schedule mandatory for both parties to the employment contract, then when hiring new employees, the employer should make appropriate changes to such a schedule.
It should be noted that the current legislation does not directly regulate the issue of the procedure for making changes and additions to the vacation schedule. We believe that such changes can be included in the vacation schedule in the manner established for approval of the schedule itself. That is, before approving changes and additions to the vacation schedule, the employer must coordinate them with the representative body of employees (if there is one in the organization). Therefore, the most appropriate option for making additions to the vacation schedule is to draw up an additional schedule to the main approved vacation schedule, which will indicate newly hired employees and their vacation periods.
Prepared answer:
Expert of the Legal Consulting Service GARANT
Pershina Elena
Response quality control:
Reviewer of the Legal Consulting Service GARANT
Komarova Victoria
March 1, 2021 GARANT. RU: https://www.garant.ru/consult/work_law/704036/#ixzz4yhjrDogF
