Taking annual leave: changes from 2024
June 2023 – From 2024, new ground rules will apply when it comes to taking annual leave. Specifically, these include the carryover of holidays to the following year and a conversion from holidays to sick days. What do these new rules look like in practice?
From next year, holidays coinciding with a sick period can always be converted to sickness. As a result, your employee can still take the holidays that coincided with a sick period at a later date. This new rule applies not only to sick periods coinciding with annual leave, but also to the following absences during the holiday:
industrial accident and occupational disease
maternity leave, and also the substitute birth leave in case of hospitalisation or death of the mother
prophylactic leave (but not the preventive work removal of pregnant/ recently delivered employees due to a health risk at work)
adoption leave
foster care leave and foster parent leave
Another important novelty is the portability of holidays to the two following years, if your employee did not take them in the current year due to any of the absences mentioned above.
Note: taking statutory holidays within the year remains the starting point! So, together with your employees, you as an employer must continue to make the necessary efforts to have them taken within the year. This transfer right is also not unlimited in time: your employee must take the transferred holidays within the two years following the initial year.
In principle, this change does not apply to extralegal leave schemes.
Valid from 2024
Keep in mind that these changes take effect from 1 January 2024. They will therefore have no impact on holiday periods in 2023. So if one of your employees is or becomes ill during a holiday period this year, the current legal rules still apply.
Also, the right to carry over holidays applies for the first time to untaken holidays from 2024.
