Employee resigns after boss rolls out ‘ridiculous’ annual leave policy

A boss has sparked fury after he brought in a policy that forces his employees to have their annual leave approved twice.

Digital entrepreneur, Ben Askins, from the UK, shared a now-viral video revealing the details surrounding the situation.

The boss sent an email out to employees notifying them of the change to the company’s annual leave policy.

He said: “Hi all, I’m writing to inform you of a change to our annual leave policy. As you know, the process at the moment is you add your time to the system and wait for it to be approved”.

“Moving forwards there will now be an extra step. You’ll submit through the usual system and wait for it to be confirmed.”

He added: “You will then need to message me to personally make sure that it is still okay the week before you are off. I will then reserve the right to cancel it depending on the business requirements.”

“The reason for this change is that we as a business keep being surprised with people being away and it is starting to impact our revenue levels.”

His employees were understandably unimpressed by their boss’s email.

One of his staff members, James, sent him a message in response to the policy change.

“Hi Elliot, I just wanted to give you a heads up, that this new policy change has gone down extremely badly with the team.”

“I really think we are going to lose staff over this. The main point seems to be the concern that they can never really plan holidays if they need to wait for your sign off so close to the time they are going away.”

“Is there any chance we can find another way to do this?” Thanks,” said James.

Elliot then responded to James with a quick but curt email.

“James, my job is to drive this business forward, yours is to make sure we deliver everything as planned and that includes making sure people don’t quit,” said Elliot.

James was shocked at Elliot’s response and sent him an email, deciding to resign as a result.

“Hi Elliot, if that is your honest assessment of this problem then it is clear I cannot do my job to any degree of success with you making these types of decisions,” explained James.

“With that in mind please find my written letter of resignation attached.”

“I am giving you a professional heads up. I know for a fact that this is not the last one of these you will be receiving over the next few days,” said James.

Ben then weighed in on the situation and said “that is absolutely batsh**.”

“You are absolutely joking. Think about how stupid this person is.”

“He’s literally admitting, I know we have a system that tracks everything and gets formal approval. But I either don’t know how to log in or keep being surprised that people use their annual leave,” explained Ben.

“Does he not know how holidays work? People book flights and holidays ahead of time or whatever it might be. So the idea that this is his plan is absolutely crazy.”

The digital entrepreneur couldn’t “fathom” the boss’s new policy and explained he has now caused one of his most senior people to quit.

Ben’s video garnered over 380,000 views and people in the comments were furious.

“Is this even legal?!” Asked one.

“Reserving the right to cancel someone’s plans, the company should have to reimburse all travel costs,” added a second.

“I would immediately resign, no way could I work for a business so incompetent that they can’t keep track of annual leave,” said a third.

“The fact that they can’t use a simple calendar is ridiculous,” added another.