Unlimited paid holiday policy

Agreed: 19.06.25

Due update: 1 year from agreed date.

Adapted from: Employ America.

Overview

RadHR offers Unlimited Paid Holiday (UPH) for all employee workers, with a baseline number of required days off, in line with the UK statutory minimum holiday entitlement.

This means that we offer all workers employed by RadHR (known as ‘employee workers’) unlimited access to annual leave and that all of this time is paid.

Our policy is designed to be generous, allowing you to take time off when needed for resting, recharging, holidays, and family time.

Ultimately, the goal is to have a generous, flexible, and easy-to-administer leave policy that empowers our team, where no one feels we’re being judged by how much time we spend at work, or how many hours a week we work, and where we all feel confident that we can do what we need to do to make our lives work, while having a job where we can make a big difference in the world.

If anyone is worried that your use of the policy is having negative impacts on the team or organisation, we’ll talk about it. Otherwise, take what you need.

Scope

This policy only applies to annual leave and holiday pay. Our UPH offering does not impact workers’ eligibility/entitlement to other kinds of statutory leave, including sick leave, bereavement leave, parental leave, etc. We are currently in the process of writing other policies which cover these areas.

A note on language

We use ‘worker’ to refer to everyone who works at RadHR. This includes freelancers as well as PAYE staff, and Core Team members and associates. This can get a little confusing when we’re writing policies that encompass a bunch of different kinds of workers, all with different rights and entitlements!

For clarity, we use the wording ‘employee worker’ or ‘you’ in this policy, as this policy primarily applies to salaried staff on PAYE.

Freelancers aren’t provided any paid leave, as they are not employed by us, but we try to be flexible with everyone we work with to make sure they can take time away from work as they need to. If you are a freelancer at RadHR, we will talk to you about the arrangements we have in place to support this.

1. Practice & process

All paid time off should be approved by the Core Team in advance, when possible. Keep your calendar updated so your team knows when you’re available and not.

If you are going to be away, we will generally expect you to:

1. Notify the other members of the date the leave period will begin via the #capacity chat channel, giving as much notice as possible to allow for any accommodations that are needed;
2. For a leave period of more than 2 weeks, add it to the agenda for the next Internal Meeting;
3. Core Team agrees; worker updates their calendar with their availability
4. If the Core Team doesn’t agree to a leave request, for whatever reason, this must be formally decided via a consensus process in line with RadHR’s Decision-Making Policy and Process. In general, we try to honour all leave requests as far as possible, and if a leave request cannot be accepted, the Core Team should work together to consider alternative options.

The Core Team should also consider whether denying a leave request might prevent a worker from taking their minimum statutory annual leave entitlement for the year.

You can (and should) use unlimited paid holiday to take a mental health day, as we all need from time to time.

Minimum leave requirements

As a baseline, you should take a minimum of 28 days’ leave pro rata per calendar year, which means we calculate leave entitlement as a proportion of full-time working (e.g. if you work 3 days per week, we would calculate your leave entitlement as 28 days x 0.6 FTE = 16.8 days). This is to ensure you are taking full advantage of the minimum holiday entitlement.

If at any point during the year, it seems like you might not meet this statutory minimum, the Core Team and worker should take joint steps to ensure that the worker books some time off.

The Core Team should also see if there is any additional support they can offer that might make it more possible for you to take full advantage of this policy, which may include:

• Revisiting the Core Team Work Areas and adjusting workload;
• Sharing out tasks more amongst team members;
• Exploring if extra freelance capacity could help.

Where minimum leave has not been taken in a leave year, you may roll over your statutory leave entitlement to the following leave year, however, this is generally a situation we try to avoid as we try to discourage overworking wherever possible. 

If you are in a situation where you have not taken your statutory leave, this will usually trigger a Core Team meeting where we discuss what shifts might need to happen internally to ensure you feel able to take your entitled holiday periods.

You may roll over any untaken statutory leave for up to one leave year, except in the case of certain kinds of protected long-term leave. Where leave has been rolled over, this creates a new statutory minimum for that year (ie. 28 days’ pro rata + rolled over leave is the minimum you should take for that year).

Periods of other kinds of protected leave (such as parental leave or sick leave) do not affect a worker’s normal leave accrual (For instance, if you take parental leave for 12 months, you will still accrue your usual 28 days’ pro rata statutory leave to use the following year).

Where a worker leaves RadHR part way through a year but has not taken their full accrued leave entitlement, they may receive payment in lieu of any unused minimum holiday allowance, in line with government guidance. We will not pay out for any untaken leave beyond the statutory minimum amount you have accrued (e.g. if you work 3 days a week and are entitled to 16.8dpy, but leave 6 months into the calendar year, and have already taken 4 days’ leave, we will pay you for 4.4 days to make up the 8.4 days you will have accrued).

2. Culture

We try to honour a culture of rest. Put simply, we try to keep our work in perspective so that it can be sustainable for the long-term. 

We’re aware that some people find unlimited paid holiday arrangements uncomfortable and, in practice, this risks workers taking less time off than they’d otherwise be inclined to.

Our Work Policy outlines how we address these challenges through a particular set of group culture practices and a reflective, iterative approach to capacity planning. These practices are inextricable from how we do leave at RadHR, and thus our Work Policy should be read in tandem with our Leave Policy to give the fullest context.