Hi Guys,

Just looking for some guidance and advice on employees working overtime and if any additional compensation is required against annual leave. I have researched, also I have reached out to my many HR colleagues and no one can answer the question (we are in the process of signing up with an employment law provider - awaiting final sign off).

We have employees working a 39 week, with an annual leave entitlement of 25 days per year (Holiday year runs Jan-Dec). There is no entitlement to overtime. However, we have a number of employees working overtime to meet business demands and are being paid to reflect the additional hours worked. A question has been raised with regards to their actual payment of salary during annual leave. So for example, we could have employees working an additional 10 hours per week, their salary is reflected accordingly and this could be over a period of 4 months.

If they take annual leave within this period of working overtime obviously they get paid their holiday pay. But as a salaried employee it would be at their normal rate, therefore their salary would go back down to reflect their normal gross salary. Should we be getting an average of their working week by going back 13 weeks and applying that against their period of annual leave. Therefore giving them a slight increase in their salary when taking annual leave.

As I mentioned I have researched including the Conditions of employment act 1936 and on review I am slightly confused as to the wording:

Section 25 - Remuneration during annual leave

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1936/act/2/section/25/enacted/en/html#sec25

Does it mean that O/T will not be included and therefore no average calculation needs to be obtained using the 13 week rule?

Many thanks

Vicky