Should this be training, unpaid time off or holiday?

[AnnO'Neemus]

Starting a new job. I have a relevant, specialist industry certification at the lowest level. I mentioned in my application and interview that I planned to do level two. The training is three full days. The course starts my second week on the job.

After the interview I sent a 'Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you' email in which I reiterated that I planned to do the level two training course and hoped it could be accommodated.

I got the job.

I need to have a discussion about the training course.

Do you think I should be paid for the day as if I was at work as it's relevant training for my job role? (The training isn't something that could have been delivered in-house.)

Or should I be made to use my annual leave allowance? (The three days would wipe out my holidays for the next two months/remainder of the annual leave year.)

Or should it be classed as unpaid leave? (I think I'd rather do this than take it as holiday.)

I don't know what's reasonable. Obviously, I'd rather it was just treated as I'm ooo training on Mondays for the next three weeks, but don't know whether that would be perceived as a bit cheeky, or even horribly piss-takey?

If it makes any difference, I paid for both courses myself, the one I did earlier this year and the one I'm about to do. I paid for it myself because I figured a new employer wouldn't pay for it. I did have a job interview about three weeks ago for a role where the details mentioned that company funds staff to do this training, but when I mentioned it in my interview there I was told they don't fund it for staff who are still in their probationary period. So I figured if I wanted to do it now, rather than waiting until next year, I'd have to pay for it myself.

 

[kabbes]

There is no “should” here. Push for the most you can get them to agree to.

Try to get it as paid absence (not leave!). Push for that with every argument you’ve got. Hell, if I could sucker them into a pay rise for qualifying for the training, I’d try that on as well. But if, despite your best efforts, you’re met with a blank wall of bureaucracy and refusal then just suck it up and get on with your life. After adding it to the brand new “things I don’t like about this company” basket, of course. A pickernick basket of goodies to be opened at a later date.

Either way, little emotional health is ever improved with “should”.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

There is no “should” here. Push for the most you can get them to agree to.

Try to get it as unpaid leave. Push for that with every argument you’ve got. Hell, if I could sucker them into a pay rise for qualifying for the training, I’d try that on as well. But if, despite your best efforts, you’re met with a blank wall of bureaucracy and refusal then just suck it up and get on with your life. After adding it to the brand new “things I don’t like about this company” basket, of course. A pickernick basket of goodies to be opened at a later date.

Either way, little emotional health is ever improved with “should”.

Yes, you're quite right. I have a bad 'should' habit that I'm always trying to remember to rectify with woulds and coulds, because shoulds don't come across as nicely.

I know it could go either way, I was just trying to get a sense of whether people generally thought it might be reasonable of me to ask for it to be treated as training or whether I'd be cheeky to ask.

I guess I'll just go in with a reminder that I need to be off on those three days and leave it hanging and see what they say, rather than me asking. Who knows, they might just tell me they're going to class it as a regular workday during which I'm attending training.

 

[Silas Loom]

Your line manager likely has very little interest in whether these days are taken as holiday. It’s not a good conversation starter.

The key thing to discuss at the outset is how the scheduled training affects your induction plan and immediate work objectives, and which elements of the training agenda are most relevant to your new role. Make the training and its impact on your new job an issue which is shared by you and your line manager.

In your situation, I would not raise the holiday issue formally, and just assume that the time off will be treated as paid. If you have internal timesheeting systems, just write “training”. Your manager likely keeps holiday records to share with HR; hopefully they will log the missing period as training, or describe it as such if HR queries the absence days. The point is that training is generally assumed to have been company-sponsored and carried out in normal time, so don’t challenge those assumptions up front.

As Kabbes says, if you get bad news later on, then stoicism is appropriate.

E2A - oh, you seem to have come to the same conclusion anyway!

 

[tommers]

Yeah if I was your manager I would think it was great that my new starter was doing training that they had paid for themselves and which was directly relevant to their new role. I'd just stick it down as training and get on with it

 

[Rebelda]

Yeah if I was your manager I would think it was great that my new starter was doing training that they had paid for themselves and which was directly relevant to their new role. I'd just stick it down as training and get on with it

Yeah this, tell don't ask. I'm doing that course on whatever it is, just reminding you I won't be here the next 3 Mondays.

Edit: unless your work has to be covered then I get that it's more convoluted. My training has to be booked and approved through health roster, but that's because my team has to be able to accommodate my absence.

 

[MBV]

I would give as much notice as possible that you will be out for 3 consecutive Mondays. Presumably if this interferes with your in house/induction training you can schedule this training for another time?

 

[InArduisFouette]

push for all days to be counted as training - pointing out you've paid for the course fees so they can;t try that trick ( used to be common in the NHS - we are paying for the course so you can do it in your own time )
If that doesn't float with them then unpaid if you can afford it

 

[kabbes]

Just to say that earlier, I accidentally said “push for unpaid leave” when I meant “push for paid absence”! I’ve corrected this in the original but didn’t want to leave it hanging. Not sure what was going on with my brain there.

I agree with those who are saying things like “tell, don’t ask” and “just assume it’s a paid training day until told otherwise”. There’s no need to have the confrontation with you can just play innocent. Easier to seek forgiveness than permission and all that.

 

[A380]

^^^

Just give them as much notice as you can than that you are off on training. But don’t even ask. Just assume it’s paId. Your new line manager won’t care. In fact it’s going to probably be much easier for them to treat it as a working day than have to faff about trying to work out sone seldom used unpaid/special leave process.

 

[Gromit]

New job.
On probation.
Don’t PUSH for anything.
You need leverage to push. You don’t have any yet. They still have a handy bucket of other people they can ask to take your place.

Enquire.
Express disappointment if necessary.
Sell, what’s in it for them.
Negotiate (which may require offering something in return).
Finally accept whatever outcome with a smile. The fact they aren’t insisting you be in work, working… is a plus over many other companies.

 

[MickiQ]

Yes, you're quite right. I have a bad 'should' habit that I'm always trying to remember to rectify with woulds and coulds, because shoulds don't come across as nicely.

I know it could go either way, I was just trying to get a sense of whether people generally thought it might be reasonable of me to ask for it to be treated as training or whether I'd be cheeky to ask.

I guess I'll just go in with a reminder that I need to be off on those three days and leave it hanging and see what they say, rather than me asking. Who knows, they might just tell me they're going to class it as a regular workday during which I'm attending training.

Deffo the best approach I think, Lots of companies will honour pre-existing holidays, they should certainly honour pre-existing training courses (doubly for relevant ones) I suspect your manager will do what most managers do in such situations and do whatever generates him the least amount of work which hopefully is just marking it down as a regular workday.
Make sure you record it in your training record you've done it.

 

[Silas Loom]

New job.
On probation.
Don’t PUSH for anything.
You need leverage to push. You don’t have any yet. They still have a handy bucket of other people they can ask to take your place.

Enquire.
Express disappointment if necessary.
Sell, what’s in it for them.
Negotiate (which may require offering something in return).
Finally accept whatever outcome with a smile. The fact they aren’t insisting you be in work, working… is a plus over many other companies.

This is essentially bad advice.

The second paragraph summarises an approach which would likely be appropriate for a salesperson in a sales team where overtly transactional negotiation behaviour is taken for granted. It might also be the approach taken implicitly, although not overtly, by any other employee in any other team, once trust has already been established.

It’s clearly not appropriate advice for a new starter who is not a natural negotiator and prefers to know what the rules are, like the OP.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

dunno really. not sure i've met a situation quite like this before.

it's not uncommon for employer to honour holidays that have already been booked by a new employee - although it's reasonable for employee to tell them as early as possible in the process. this might involve some unpaid leave if employee starts late in the employer's leave year but wants to take more time off than they would accrue in what's left of the year.

if it's a course that employee is doing for personal interest, that would generally be treated as holiday not work time.

employers' approach to work related training varies. some employers expect you to do x number of days' training a year (there are some lines of work where it's compulsory to do some ongoing training), others will allow it if you make a decent case for it, others don't really do anything except maybe in-house courses.

but anywhere i've worked, you have to get training agreed by some level of management (both in terms of work paying for it and agreeing time off for it) - i've not known anywhere you can just go and organise your own training and then expect employer to go along with cost or time off or both.

if new employer will normally fund it, but not for employees in their probationary period, it's possible they might see that allowing the time off but not paying for it would be a reasonable compromise. they might not want to do that as it doesn't fit their policy (management and HR people can be extremely inflexible about any variation to policy unless it really suits them.)

have you already booked / paid for it? would it just be simpler to wait until you've got your 6 months' service in then have employer pay for it?

i'm not convinced that just not turning up on the three days and expecting them to be happy with it would be a good idea.

can see both sides here - can see the point that there are limits in how far you can 'push' especially in a probationary period but that doesn't mean being a doormat.

ultimately, i think that talking to them is going to be necessary.

how far are you in to agreeing terms and conditions and all the rest of it? (generally speaking, the detail is usually sorted out after a job offer is made rather than going in to a lot of detail at the interview) i don't know what you do, or what your circumstances are, or what the jobs market is like in your line of work - is it more a case that they need you, or that you need the job?

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Belated update: I ended up taking the three days off, one day a week for three weeks, to do the course that I'd booked and paid for. I just acted on the assumption that they would be considered paid for training days.

(I think my predecessor might've done the course, and it might or might not've been paid for by the company, I don't know.)

Either way, the training was work-related and it has come in useful for the job, part of my role requires some very specific industry-related skills that the training course/qualification helps with.

I wasn't specifically asked to book any annual leave, so I didn't.

 

[abe11825]

I know it's a late add, but I would reckon that if it's work related, being a newbie or not, some compromise could happen. Especially if you had paid for it out of your own pocket. A company might see that as someone willing to "go the extra mile" since it didn't come out of company funds. Considering you're going for a higher level, there should be a way they'd work with you since you sound like you've got all the pre-requisites needed for the job anyway (level 1). Initiatives and all that.

I had a job where they not only paid you for specific training, but they funded a full week in another state for it. My plane ticket and hotel was paid for by the company and I got to submit receipts for reimbursement of meals, coffees, etc while on this training. And I was still within my probationary period. I've had other jobs where necessary training is just part of the normal training they give you when you start, so no extra days off or anything.

Having a transparency conversation about expectations is one thing, but to push the expectations is another. You don't want to start off on the wrong foot and have regrets.

Everyone made good points above me, so I don't want to step on anyone's toes. I can see both sides to the reasonings and advice. I have been in situations where employers don't like to start sending new hires out on training in the early months because the employee might not last, but some like to get it out of the way. You just never know anyway with a person - the employer might night like you or you might not like the employer. That next day after probation ends could always be your last day or you can last 6 years before someone says "goodbye".

Cool that you did it and it went well!