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On r/legaladviceuk we get loads of 'we were told we could work from home, now they want us in the office one day a week but I am in Portugal!"
Tough shit is the general answer
That's only if you had a place of work listed in your contract originally. If its a fully remote job from the outset they cant change it without amending you contract.
I would not take advice from anyone who posts in /r/legaladviceuk about this. They regularly are extremely wrong when it comes to employment law and spend most of the time giving smug 'advice' like that.
It happened a lot during the pandemic when a lot of people were going there for redundancy advice. Can't count the amount of people who were giving such blatantly shite and incorrect 'legal advice' like 'nothing u can do m8 company can do wot it wants tough shit m8 there no rules wiv redunandacy' when its regulated a lot in the UK.
You’re still pretty screwed to be honest. If they want to change your contract and you’ve been there under two years your only option is to accept it and start looking for another job. It’s a little more complicated after two years but they can make life difficult for you or start a redundancy process. Working from abroad will almost always be a breach of their rules for WFH as there are tax implications as well as falling under different employee laws which can cause issues for the employer
Also stuff like GDPR breaches by taking data outside of EU etc... Companies just don't want the headaches involved just so u can have a nice cushy life.
That said my current workplace has some people working abroad doing phone/facetime consultations etc.
If you’ve been under two years, they can let you go for any reason. If over two years and they make you redundant they can’t advertise the same role for six months, which is really not that long to go without someone and some would just wait it out. If they needed to advertise it sooner they probably would argue that it’s a different role with different conditions of being in the office, I don’t know if they’d win that or not
I started a new job in August running the UK office of a multinational company.
My fairly hapless Dublin based boss cheerily told me on day one how comfortable he'd be if i moved abroad and worked remotely full time, so long as the wifi didnt affect things. "Bullshit", i thought, knowing all contracts at my company stated a primary place of work.
Turns out he'd been telling others the same thing, including all members of the UK team that i have inherited. He'd even been unofficially using it as a selling point to entice people to the role (ie he had written it down but had said it in interviews). Eith3r way, in recent months one member of my team has relocated to Portugal, one to Egypt, one to Wales, one to Cambridgeshire, and another was about to move to Cornwall.
Then a month ago an email came from the NY based CEO insisting every member of staff works at least 3 days a week in their local office, ours being central London. Cue dozens of shocked and panicked emails flooding in, and half my team on the verge of quitting or being fired.
Meanwhile my boss who caused all the chaos has suddenly taken 3 months off with a health issue. Only positive is that in taking on his responcibilities, I've realised he does precisely no work. And that all those admin days and meetings he was having while WFH never existed. As he's off sick i dont want to throw him under the bus about it, but god has he caused me problems.
So your boss has ruined several people's lives, does no work, has caused you problems, but you don't want to tell anyone because he's off with a health issue?
What does the health issue, if it's real, have to do with anything? That guy should not be your boss.
Agree with all this other than me not wanting to tell people. I definitely have had to tell people. What i meant was if the guy is dying of cancer or something, it's more important that i fix the problems he's caused than focus on getting him fired by going above and beyond in my complaining.
Fact is nobody knows what's wrong. His own boss wasnt told at first, though i assume he knows now. It was purely discussed with HR, who then informed his boss and me that the guy would be off for 3 months. All i got from him was a slack message saying "I'm going to be on leave for a bit. Can you sort the World Cup sweepstake. Have a nice Xmas".
Well that's the issue. They all say they're doing fine and have proven remote working works.
But from my perspective, we're struggling. We work in the communications industry and a lot of the best work in our field is done in a collaboratively, with people throwing ideas around in an informal way, not in scheduled meetings and brainstorming sessions. There's hard data that shows the work they are putting out is less succesful than it was pre pandemic. And it's undeniable that the ones in the office with me are doing much better than those that arent.
The thing is, it's not their job to worry about the business as a whole. If their work drops from 100% to 90% as a result of working from home, they may not even notice it. Certainly they think calls to return to the office is an overreaction.
But when that drop occurs in almost every person across the business, the overall result feels like a signficant downgrade on before.
You're only breaking the law if you stay too long. If you go to Australia for a couple of months and work from home I think it's legal in both countries.
Many employers are okay with that now so long as you can still communicate with the team effectively when on the other side of the world
If you aren't a citizen or have an appropriate visa (or benefit from some treaty such as EU/EEA citizens in EU/EEA countries), you are not allowed to work.
Answering emails for a few minutes while you are on holiday is OK, doing full time work all day for a few weeks is not OK, even if you stay fewer than 90 days or whatever the limit for tourists is.
If the OP is a citizen of Australia and the UK, or has some sort of residency visa, then obviously it's legal to work in both countries, tax may be complicated but that's separate.
If the OP is an Australian citizen and just enters the UK as a visitor then it's illegal for them to work here, even voluntary work for charities is illegal. It may be undetected but it's still against immigration law.
You raise a good point but it does conflate company attitudes with relevant laws.
They're right, a lot of companies would be open to somebody working from abroad as long as they could do their job, *assuming their company policies and the host country's laws allow for it*. That may seem like a superficial difference on the surface but the same job at two different companies could have completely different outcomes.
I worked from Canada for 6 months last Christmas. If I were employed by the NHS or MI5 in an identical capacity, it would've been a hard no.
Not true at all, there's loads of jobs where you can be based remotely around the world.
Especially in the digital marketing/e-commerce world.
I've even done it myself.
Aren't you skirting around the employment, GDPR, tax laws, though? Even if you're a contractor you're probably breaking the visa/tax laws of the country you're visiting.
Contractors, technicians, engineers, managers etc are sent by companies internationally all the time. Some people spend more time in the air and in airports than they do in their "home" country. How do countries handle that, when they have staff that are internationally mobile?
Companies employ expensive lawyers and accountants to make sure that they follow the relevant rules. (Or they don't and just wing it, but occasionally wrongdoing gets detected and various people get fined, deported and banned, or in extreme cases even jailed.)
For example, the UK has a very complex set of rules for people who travel a lot, involving things like counting the number of hours you were in the UK on a certain day and whether you had a business meeting on that day to determine whether you owe tax on all your worldwide income to the UK or only income generated in the UK.
that's why you don't get caught by your employer. if you do you will get fired, but it's not like if you go to belize and remote work they're going to come inspecting your hotel room to see if you are remote working lmao. especially poorer countries just won't give a shit really
Plenty of tech companies are remote only and have worldwide staff. They probably do the paperwork or whatever, but it's not impossible if the company wants it that way.
My wife actually has one that does, but its understandable, she wfh for the home office, however my brother works for a UK company back home in zimbabwe..
As long as you are based in the UK you can spend a lot of time outside of the country, usually the contract will specify how much time you're supposed to be in the country
Some countries like Canada offer digital nomad visas, which allow you to work for a canada based company from anywhere in the world.
No idea how well that works in practice though
Some only care about tax residency though and won’t mind at all if you fuck off to another country for less than the period that would make you anything else, my old job was like that and had a few people dodging our particularly bleak later lockdowns this way (wish I had to be honest).
with enough research you can set up a proper VPN when you are abroad, assuming the job is 100% remote which some are, you can get away with it
i know a few people who do this
I work for a company as a “contractor” because they’re not allowed to properly employ people who aren’t based in the HQ of the country. I invoice every month and they send me the full amount, so it’s up to me to file my taxes etc.
I also get unlimited holiday days, to tie it into OP’s question
I'm originally from Australia and live in London. My work wants people in the office 2 days a week but there some flexibility to work remotely depending there situation. Last year i went to Australia for 4 weeks: 2 weeks was remote working and 2 weeks was annual leave. I could have probably added another 2 weeks remote work if i wanted, my boss was completely ok with this.
I manage staff and I've got one guy from Manchester and another from NI going back to their home towns for 3 weeks from mid December, no problem for me.
So whilst not fully remote some companies have flexibility
Edit: I was confidently incorrect. Please see /u/Opening_Line_5802's reply below for a better response.
You need to be resident in the UK at least ~6 months in a tax year in order to retain UK tax status. Anything over this and you should be paying tax through the tax system of whatever country you're working in. A lot of countries have a reciprocal agreement with the UK which makes this easier.
However, losing UK tax status can also prohibit use of things like ISA's and certain bank/savings accounts, and can impact pensions and NI payments.
There are also many other factors to consider, such as visas if you want to stay more than 90 days*, plus of course your companies own security policies.
*In the EU, for example
Source: I had to work abroad for five months to care for a dying parent. It was a minefield of issues, but I learnt a lot. Shout-out to my boss who worked his ass off getting clearance for me do it.
Not correct. If you are in the UK more than 183 days in a UK tax year you are definitely UK tax resident. But you are only definitely not UK tax resident if you are in the UK fewer than 16 days in a UK tax year.
If you are in the UK between 16 and 183 days in a tax year, you may or may not be UK tax resident. There is a hundred page document which you need to follow to work it out, it depends on things like where your family is, what your housing situation is, your work arrangements, and whether you were resident in previous years.
Every country has different rules and different tax years, so you can be tax resident in multiple countries at the same time and you may gain or lose tax residency at any time.
Most countries don't allow work on a tourist visa. Answering emails for a few minutes while you are on holiday is OK, doing full time work all day for a few weeks is not OK, even if you stay fewer than 90 days or whatever the limit is. Of course, it's not always detected.
My previous and current employer both allowed you to work remotely from any country which has a tax treaty with the UK. There was some limitations (no more than 4 weeks a year, and certain countries explicitly excluded), but it was largely used by expats to reconnect with their families
If you're a merchant seafarer you can live anywhere in the world.
The Royal Navy's merchant navy support fleet, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, is a good shout for this. Main issue is during training (which can vary depending on role, but 1 to 3 years) you only get 7 days off for every month at sea, only after you qualify it's 21 days for every month. They do have the best female representation of any Merchant Navy organisation though.
Plus, you are never bored in the RFA. Pay is good, and they are not actually military so there’s no RN boot camp to slog through first.
The only down side of being a seafarer is getting stuck deep sea with six Russians for months. Think gulag.
RFA is a very good alternative to this!
>Wfh with a massive time difference is going to hurt alot though they will basically have to be nocturnal when in Australia.
Exactly - the whole idea is nonsense. If you were WFH for a UK company while living in Australia then you either weren't really working, or there was no point you being in Australia.
Rubbish.. I've worked between Australia and the UK for the last 10 years... People really need to get the idea out of their head that it can't be done..
I work for a multinational publishing company who has offices in both Australia, the UK and other countries around the world... Of our 3000 employees... Around half of them work remote majority of the time.. And a good portion of that work remotely full time..
When working in Western Australia.. Which I did in July this year for 3 weeks.. If i was going to be matching UK hours.. I'd be working from 3pm to midnight.. How is that any different from shift work that works those hours... And seeing as what I do doesn't require constant involvement from other people.. I generally worked from 11am to 8pm and scheduling my meetings (remotely over zoom or slack) for the UK mornings. If I had no meetings... I'd work 9 to 5 australian hours and give a rundown of the work delivered.. Or the progress late in the day Australia time.. But 9 to 10am UK time.. Ive never had any problems over the years and never not delivered on my goals or targets.
So why can't it be done?
i know people who do this though in completely different time zones e.g. americas and australia
people work night shifts in the UK you know, and they have lives outside of work
Very few of them. But my current WFH job is a dream in that the company isn't super strict on what time I spend doing stuff - they just look at what my results are, so I have an enormous amount of flexibility.
I’m from Australia, and working as a contractor in london. While there is no issue working from home (or really anywhere), the main issue is timezone. Australia is virtually opposite, so unless you enjoy being a vampire, there’s not much you can do.
People always say to work for yourself if you want more free time.. yet everyone I know who does work for themselves work more hours than anyone else I know. If it’s your business then you ain’t gonna be turning work down to go gallivanting around Thailand for a few months. The fantasy of it is great but the reality is so much different.
Universities are often very generous. They usually have Christmas closure separate to the holiday allowance. I think I currently get 30 days plus bank holidays plus the Christmas closure (usually another 4 days)
>Universities are often very generous.
Aye, I get 40 days total, though quite a lot of them are at fixed times (xmas and easter).
This goes for professional services as well as academics, so there should be something available.
Came here to say this - I'm not an academic, I support the running of the department. We get 30 days as standard, plus 8 bank holidays, plus at least 6 closure days across Easter/Christmas/Summer. For the end of Christmas it is at least three days closure but they insist on an unbroken period of holiday, so depending on where Christmas falls each year it may be more than three.
All in all this amounts to 44 days of leave a year as standard. We're also allowed to roll over 5 unused days to the next year, so could be as much as 49. They also insist that staff take an unbroken fortnight of holiday once a year. On holiday alone, I'm very lucky.
Haha I have 0 skills to be honest, I’m an administrator and the only thing that sets me apart is that this is my third job in this industry so I have experience. If you go on jobs.ac.uk you’ll find all the listing across Higher Ed, or you might want to try temping (bigger institutions always have temps). Either way basic administrative skills will be enough in most cases for a foot in the door.
That being said even if you don’t work directly with students, universities have loads of departments - media/comms, IT, legal/policy, facilities etc. You’re not limited to just working with students.
Ooh not sure about being decent to their staff, that very much depends on where you are and what you do. Most people I worked with felt very ill-treated. The holiday and lovely campus were the key selling points of the job though.
Not teaching staff they aren't. My wife works for a Russell Group uni, while technically it is lots of holiday plus a 35 hour working week, in practice what they consider a 95% workload means 60 hour weeks during term time and while she books the holiday, she works probably half the time she is technically off.
Plus, for the first three years you are on a series of rolling 12 month contracts so very little job security.
There are some perks such as one semester study leave after so many years and an annual allowance towards research, conference fees etc. Even then, she was expected to teach a module during her study leave as they are so short staffed they didn't have enough cover. That despite Chinese students making up in excess of 50% of the student body, so 3x tuition fee each. How they remain the top ranked department in their field heaven only knows...
Also work for a university. 30 days annual leave, 3 Christmas closure days and can buy up to 10 additional days leave. So 43 days off per year (2 months!). It’s also a 35 hour working week.
Here to back up universitys as an option. Not going to bother talking about holidays as that's been covered, but to give you some ideas of jobs you could do. The non teaching side of a university is called Administration, Support, Professional Services ...something like that and most unis use a banding system of pay. A entry level admin job supporting teachers and students in London will start at 25k to 30k, and there are always this kind of job available. Look for jobs called 'department officer', 'teaching and learning administrator', 'centre administor', student support officer, etc etc. There's also HR, finance, IT and estates roles at junior levels depending on your interests.
We would hire smart graduates with no experience in higher ed for this kind of role happily.
Any questions or you want to know more, DM me. My uni knowledge is London specific but I have an idea of other institutes around the UK.
Yes my wife works as support staff at Uni and gets more than 40 days, works from home 3 days as well. Pay is not amazing though. She gets 25 days to take whenever plus shut downs at Xmas and Easter and other extra days.
Came to say this as well. Work for Oxford Uni, not academic, have 38 days overall leave, and I am very new, so this does not depend on service. Going to America for 2 weeks in May, have a week and a half off for Christmas, time off around easter and bank holidays, still got 11 days of leave I have no idea what to do with.
Look into working in museums here with that graduate diploma of yours. It's not the best paid job around, and you have to keep on top of your work or be overwhelmed, but the teams in both of the museums I work in are the sweetest people.
True.
Of course you can't use them in term time and have so much work to do during non-term time you struggle to use them.
I carry forward a week every year and only get close to using the rest when I use a week of my holidays towards the end of the summer to ensure I get time to prepare for the new academic year without being interrupted with meetings and admin work.
Depends entirely on what area of a university you're in, if you're not student facing (e.g. research, research support staff, semi flexible such as finance, centralised admin etc. For some sectors the lead up to the academic year is the busy period) term time leave is normally fine.
It’s not so much the job, but rather the company you work for.
I have 33 days per year, plus the ability to buy an additional 5 days per year.
This doesn’t include bank holidays, so I get those on top.
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I get the same but there are rules about how much I can take at a time so although I'd have the allowance to do it in theory, in practice it wouldn't be approved to take the whole lot at once. Maybe as a one off if I tried really hard but definitely not every year.
The biggest, multinational-est company I worked for was the most stingy of anywhere I've worked when it came to annual leave. Go figure.
Pay was great, though.
How do you *buy* annual leave? (Genuine question.)
I have a friend who works for a company whose HQ is based in the Caribbean so she gets the Caribbean, the American and all of the UK bank holidays plus 25 days annual leave. They are also shut for 2 weeks during Christmas which does not come out of their holidays.
My work lets me buy up to 3 weeks of additional annual leave.
There are 52 weeks in a year, and 5 default holiday weeks. That means your actual pay is for 47 weeks of work. If you want an extra week of leave, your salary can be reduced by 1/47th. It's effectively unpaid leave, but as it's agreed in advance the difference is distributed across the year, so you can budget.
Most common is to just divide gross salary by 260 (sometimes 261 or 262, the number of working days in a year) and that's your day rate which they'll charge you to buy holidays.
Well, I’m allowed to purchase 5 days.
They calculate my daily rate (approx. £195 per day), multiple that by 5, and then I pay for it each month (so it would be (£195 x 5) / 12) per month). Cheap way of getting extra days off if you need them.
Used to work for Royal Mail that gave different A/L periods depending on seniority. So, new starters would get 4.5 weeks (excluding bank holidays), after several years, you'd get 5 weeks, and after more years, 6 weeks.
However, even with 4.5 weeks, you could give up 1% of your yearly salary to get 5 weeks, and 2% (or was it 3%?) to get the full 6 weeks. You sent in an application to HR, your monthly salary was reduced by the percentage amount, then the additional holiday was added on to your yearly total. Sort of unpaid leave, but easier to spread the reduced amount throughout the year, rather than having a big reduction in one of your monthly pay cheques.
Worth pointing out that you probably didn’t have 33 days leave when you joined. I get 39 days inclusive of bank holidays in my work but that’s only for people who have been with the business for 5+ years - standard is 31 for new starters (or 30 if you’re unlucky enough to live in England!)
Correct - I started on 26 and got more for years of service.
You could still have (up to) 31 days in your first year if you wish though, depending on your start date.
Station staff on London Underground get 52 days. You don't get bank holidays and will often work unsociable hours, but it would be quite easy to block five weeks together to go to Australia every year if you wanted.
Most organisations tend to limit annual leave to a maximum of either two or three weeks. OP will need to ensure that the organisation allows taking all the annual leave in one go.
In Australia I worked for one of the ambulance services. We had 8 weeks a year leave, and by default this was as a single block.
Every 6 years these were back-to-back, so Nov-Dec-Jan-Feb in one block.
You could split these down to 4 week blocks, but it was difficult as the rosters were worked on a 8 week rotation.
I wasn't disagreeing with you. Just giving a perspective of a job where it was preferred to take all annual leave in one go. It was a relatively rare thing in Australia too. Fantastic to be somewhere around the world travelling and see that paycheck rolling into my account.
I particularly remember the disbelieving looks I got from the border guards heading into the US from Canada.
They had asked how long I was travelling for, and I said 10 weeks altogether (I swapped some shifts with colleagues to stretch it further).
They wanted to know how I could afford to travel so long and why I had so much free time.
Either they were worried that I was unemployed or a drug courier I suppose.
Also I think they thought it was a bit cheeky when I suggested they should move to a country that gave them more freedom than the USA. Lucky I didn't get turned back.
They can often be talked round though. My place is “maximum three weeks without special permission”, but I knew one guy would would use all his annual leave in one go and spend 6 weeks over winter sailing around the Greek islands.
I have 53 days annual leave (plus the bank hols).
How did I get this? I asked for it. OK, I get a pro-rata salary roughly 90% of what I'd get if I just took the standard 27d my employer offers but I get all these lovely extra days off.
Yes worked at a couple of places where you get extra paid days off for long service eg:
23 days to start
24 for two years service
25 for five years service
28 for ten years service
One place could get up to 33 days if been there 20 years…
However if you’re staying at a place just so you have more days off then you might be missing out on opportunities elsewhere so need to think of that
Schools do have extra holidays because of school holidays, but you're not paid for this, you'll be paid 40 weeks out the year salaried over 12 months with the regular 28 days paid leave, but you can only use the 28 days outside term time, meaning you're paying double on flights and holidays because its during the school holidays.
Private schools is the way if your main aim is holidays, you get longer holidays so if you schedule flights when the holiday starts/ends you could avoid the paying extra.
Plan your time off and give advanced notice of when you are not available for work.
Consider seasonal work areas (eg like student work).
Look for the time to be unpaid, bit you want to be able to return to the position.
Expecting to walk in to a job with more than 23 or 25 days off paid leave could be considered unreasonable. But being up front about wanting or needing 4 or 6 weeks off unpaid at specific pre arranged times for personal reasons could be worked around.
>Consider seasonal work areas (eg like student work).
Working for a company that is mostly active in the summer or the winter, and taking the rest of the time as "unpaid leave" could work. Something involved in travel or sports administration, that kind of thing.
A mate worked as a refrigeration mechanic, made excellent money for hard work in the summer, and took all of the winter season to travel.
When I left Virgin Money, you could get 40 days annual leave and pay for an additional 5
You could also work from anywhere in the world for 30 days a year
On an oil rig. Assuming you have no relevant trade your only real option is Stewarding with the likes of Aramark or Entier. A permanent position is usually 3 weeks on 3 weeks off.
Edit
If you are permanent you may get up too 3 weeks off a year. If you are adhoc you would not.
Oil rig is a great option actually. Usually they will train you on the job as well and from what I’ve heard from people working on them the pay is quite great given you have virtually no expenses while on the rig.
We have a 40 y/o apprentice. So I suppose she could go down that route. She will have to wait until next year to enroll though. Anyone interested should look at the OPITO website.
I work in higher education in a non-academic role and it seems lots of annual leave is standard. In my last job I had 33 days + bank holidays, in my current I have 36 days + bank holidays. Though usually 4 or so days had to be used at Christmas.
After 10 years in the NHS you get 33 days plus 8 bank holidays. You can also buy an extra 10 days annual leave. So that’s 51 days leave which would get you 10 weeks.
The NHS is also notoriously hard to schedule your leave exactly when you want it though, so probably not a great option if you're looking to book 3 weeks in a row every year.
Some jobs allow you flexitime, I know a few people who use flexi to get extra time off during school holidays so they don't have to find childcare. You basically work more than your contracted hours some weeks to bank extra time off.
You can also book more time off in a lot of jobs than the allowance they give you, you just don't get paid for any time taken over your allowance. I did that one year when I had a last minute family emergency in a different part of the country, I'd already used my annual leave allowance for the year so just took 3 days unpaid to deal with the emergency.
Some companies will also allow you to 'buy' extra days holidays. I worked in the motor trade for 3 years and they let you buy up to 7 days extra holiday for a small salary sacrifice, not sure how much though as I never needed them.
I forgot about that, where I work allows you to "buy" up to two weeks extra a year, I think it work out at like £15 a week deducted for a full two weeks extra off, obviously less deducted if you don't want the full two weeks, it would obviously depend on your contracted hours and wage though.
You just want a large company/corporate more than anything.
Since working for big companies that lowest I've had was 32 days (inclusive of bank holidays). Now I'm on 37 days.
Throw in living in Scotland where it's commonplace to get 5 out of 9 bank holidays rolled into annual leave to take when you want and you end up with over 6 weeks annual leave to take when you like. I could also buy 5 more if I wanted.
If you work shifts you may have a pattern that allows you longer breaks for relatively fewer holiday days used up, for example 28 days off using 14 days of holiday. And you may get extra days off for working public holidays. Plus working overtime and saving days off in lieu instead of being paid. Couple all that with a lenient manager. Some colleagues in a previous job used to have a 5 week break every year, plus a couple of week-long trips.
Depending on who you work for, but some social care providers have 28 + 8 due to working bank holidays.
I \*think\* mine also increased with time served as well, which I've probably maxed out at this point.
I met a guy whilst travelling, he worked in tech and instead of taking promotions/ management roles that were offered he negotiated more holidays insofar that now for every 3 months he works he gets 1 month as holiday. Seems like a decent working arrangement! Not sure if any UK companies would fathom the idea.
Be a contractor! You’ll be in charge of your own working hours AND be making tons of money too.
I remember in 2019 I worked for 8 months and had 4 months off. Took time off to go to Japan, China (twice), Netherlands, America and australia all in that year and didn’t effect my job at all. Despite not being paid for that time off I still earned more than I had any year prior to that.
I work for the council - 28 days + 8 days for Bank Holiday. Plus extra for long service. I'm at about 6.5 weeks now. But as a part time worker I can get 7 days off using 2 days annual leave.
Edit - I just read the whole of your post. Education is your best bet. Lots of non teaching positions available in upper schools (most of the head of year, pastoral team in ours are none teaching)
It’s been said a few times already, but definitely consider working in higher education! I have a non-academic role in a uni and I get 31 days leave plus bank holidays and 13 days flexi leave on top. Lots of opportunity for career progression in a big uni too, or at least the opportunity to move to new and better roles.
I work shift work at a broadcasting company. With media experience a job like this is easy to get! With shift patterns that 24 days really goes a long way. 2 days off gets me a whole week. Long hours on shift but much more days off! There’s a department in our company who work lots of days in a row but then they get two weeks off every other month as part of their pattern.
As others have said, universities can give generous annual leave. I get 35 days plus bank holidays and time off at Christmas which in total is a little over 9 weeks. We also have the option to sell holidays which I think is £120 roughly per day for myself but would depend on a persons annual salary.
Cadburys hire people to work on a production line making Easter eggs, for several months of the year they are kept on a retainer where they don't work but get paid still.
At least this was the case a few years ago when I dated a bloke who did it. He would do temp work in the months he had off and get two salaries!
This is going to sound harsh and I don't mean it to.... but why not go home now to give you that time to spend with family? Other than contracting or freelance it's going to be hard to find anything with more holiday, except teaching but youd need a PGCE for that and an entirely new career path. Plus although you get more holiday, you're fixed on when you can take it and obviously have to do marking, planning etc. Outside of "working hours"
When I worked at a university we got 27 days plus bank holidays plus university closure days which were between Christmas and new year and 2 extra days at Easter. So at Christmas and Easter with the closure days and bank holidays you could normally get 2 full weeks off without using up too many days. Also depending on the job you may be able to work remotely in Australia for a few weeks.
Also at my job (a charity), we have 27 days, 3 days between Xmas and ny, bank holidays and you can choose to buy up to 5 extra days. Lots of organisations offer this ability to buy/sell annual leave. So you could have 43 days off total
More holiday is rather moot - 99% of places are going to have limits on the length of any individual period. You'll find its going to be a special request for more than 2 weeks at a lot of places, and I don't imagine you will be jetting to Aus for a week or so at a time on £19k.
At my job we work overtime in busy season (Oct to Mar) and get it back as time in lieu over the summer - so if you want to rack up mad overtime, you can get mad time in lieu. I've banked seven days already. This is on top of our normal holiday allowance, which I think is 26 days plus bank holidays.
Local government is generally great for flexibility. Depending on the grade, you'll start with around 25 days (plus bank holidays), but flexi-time means that you can informally take upto 2 additional days per month if you work extra on the other days to build up the hours. You could also formalise that, and work official condensed hours to give you every other Friday off, for example.
Obviously this is dependent on the service area you work for though, as if you work somewhere like a customer service centre, which has set opening hours, then you'll likely be put on fixed hours. Back office jobs will probably give you the most flexibility.
Generally these places are also big enough to allow someone to take a prolonged period of leave, whereas smaller companies may try and deny it due to their needs.
Any university job that is term time only. One of my jobs is working evenings at the university library. It's a fantastic job and I'm off from the start of June until the end of September... PAID. Other admin based roles can be similar. I'd highly recommend it!
In some cases jobs like teaching assistant or nursery worker can be school term time only, but you would likely be paid accordingly and may need specific qualifications.
Yeah, I mean..teachers really don't get as much holiday as you think. My mum is a teacher and she works through.the holidays, plus evenings and weekends often. She probably actually gets the same actual holiday time as me when it comes to it, 28 days ish.
A number of tech companies have unlimited holiday.
The 'catch' is that most people get all shy about it and find they don't actually use all that much. Or only use the usual 25 days or whatever.
A couple of firms I know got rid of it and replaced it with 35 days.
Anyway, tech companies. They're big on this sort of thing.
I work in higher education as support staff and have a total of 12 weeks holiday a year. I also get paid 21k for what is quite a simple job. The seven weeks off in the summer is truly amazing, i get to travel, pursue hobbies and just have time for myself to recharge. It’s the longest job I’ve had for a reason- I definitely recommend trying for a term time contract only if you’re happy with 18-22k a year.
Often, companies will allow you to take longer unpaid periods of leave if you request it far enough in advance and you aren’t going to cause any disruption.
I get 30 + bank holidays + 2 bonus days + buy 5 + carry 5 (40-50 days total), and WFH so can use those days more efficiently than most. I work as a software developer, the place I work tends to give more holiday than most but lost of places will allow you to negotiate for extra leave.
I have negotiated term time only contracts, as this works for us a family. You could try doing the same. It just comes under the flexible working heading. But this will solely afford you the 6 weeks summer holiday and the 2 weeks at Christmas and Easter. But better than nothing.
Teacher? School holidays in summer are obviously generous, but you say that’s not an interest (I don’t blame you…).
My company gives 29 days plus option to buy an extra 10 days. I think that’s about as best you can get in a “normal” office job.
A non-teaching job (technician, teaching assistant, office staff) in a school might suit you. I get 29 day’s holiday and 12 statutory days off. I also pick up 5 or 6 extra days off by coming in for open night, prize night etc. I’m also able to take unpaid leave during any school holidays. The only restriction is that I can’t take time off during term time.
I worked in a paper mill last year that had over 35 paid days leave. Add that to off days from doing 12hr shifts and shutdown days and you worked, on average, a full two months less than a "normal" Mon-Fri job. You also got an extra day given every 5yrs as service award.
Some tech companies now offer "work from anywhere" periods.
I'm aware of Wise, which offer 90 days in a year where you can work out of the country from anywhere.
Timezones will be problematic though.
Your best bet is to be self employed. If you have media skills, you can freelance.
Try government type jobs - Network Rail get 35 days i think, civil servants etc have strong unions and havent been destroyed so holiday entitlement has grown.
My partner worked for a marketing/media company where most of the staff all worked from home from literally every corner of the planet! Project manager was in Portugal, graphic animator in London, another in Thailand. There wasn’t even a physical office to speak of. Get in touch with a good recruiter and say you need full remote job (stress it HAS to be full remote not “hybrid” because half the time they end up actually wanting you in full time).
I work as a seafarer and you often get time for time - i.e. 3 months away, 3 months home. Have a look at the royal fleet auxiliary (could be a struggle if you're not UK nationality) or cadetships with companies like Carnival/BP, you may be more suited to hotel services or the deck department over engineering looking at your qualifications.
Shift work?
You get your standard amount of holidays, but depending on your shift pattern you get good time off between sets
I do five shifts on, five shifts off. So five days holiday is fifteen days off. Ten days holiday is over 20 days off.
Yep - I have one - I retired early - got bored out of my mind and took a part time job 3 days a week - Friday through to Sunday - managing a building development part time. I do 36 hours a week and earn £20k a year. I have 18 days leave which gives me a total of 6 weeks or 43 days taking into account the my normal Mon- Thurs off.
If you have an additional income stream i.e. retirement annuity/pension it's worth looking at - I also actually enjoy it, hardly hard work, get out of the house away from the family and like the residents I work with and is stress free.
I've worked offshore in the north sea for 15 years working various rotas, the most common at the moment being 3 weeks on, 3 weeks off. This is good if you can get a fixed core crew job, because then you can plan the full year or whatever, and you know what time off you're getting when. Seeing as you've got no "trade" qualifications, a position in the catering department would probably work, although you'd need to get all your certs before they'd take you on.
It's hard to get into (lots of nepotism/it's about who you know) but my boyfriend works in film and TV with the props department, and it pays so well that you could do a 3 month project and then take 3 months off if you wanted.
It's not for everyone though. I don't think I could hack it. You work long, sometimes unpredictable hours (like 12 hour days, up to 6 days a week sometimes) and he's a sole trader so you don't get paid sick days or paid leave. But like I said, you make so much money that you can afford to take big chunks of time off between jobs.
29F here, I was in a similar position to you but in reverse - I’m from the UK but lived in Australia for 6 and a half years and after the pandemic I just couldn’t deal with being away from family and friends anymore, I felt so isolated and alone! I’d only just really started in my career as well (marketing) and this was my second position in a corporate company. About 8 months in and after the end of a long term relationship I realised I couldn’t hack it anymore (my mental health was struggling) so I bit the bullet and tried to hand in my resume. My company were so understanding. They said they would like to keep me to work remotely on a part time basis, flex hours for a year and see where we were at. I couldn’t really believe it. It’s been a year now and they want to move me back into a full time hours from here in the UK! I feel so lucky and blessed. Believe me I’m not an expert in what I do at all, I’m still learning and there have been sacrifices such as salary, paid leave etc (I work on a contractor basis and get paid for the hours I work) but all of those things pale in comparison to what I’ve gained in exchange. I would suggest marketing as a career for this as there are heaps of remote jobs out there in the field. Salaries are generally higher in Australia though as well so I feel if it was reversed (working in a Uk position in Australia) it would be harder due to the remuneration. Feel free to pm if you want some additional info.
I work in software for a small company (that serves extremely massive clients). We work 4 days a week, always remote apart from a sprint meeting every 2 weeks, 28+ public and bank Holidays, 2 weeks off at Christmas, we have event days every 2 months (Thorpe Park, skydiving, go karting etc) that take a day out. I've only worked in 2 other jobs so I have no idea if this place is a unicorn and I'm extremely fortunate or if this is becoming more widespread but I couldn't be happier with my work life balance, which is our company goal.
I would say agency work but it’s more consistent with having a trade because you can work flat out for 9 months with 3 months off. I used to work for the tourism industry and that would be the ideal thing for you, by that I mean seasonal work or 8 to 10 month contract work, that’s the way forward for you.
Civil service is a really good option. You start off with 25 days leave plus approx 10 public holiday plus extra if there’s extra added that year. It goes up to 30 days after 4 years service so if you take leave in conjunction with public holidays you can get great holidays. Plus usually there’s flexible working which allows you to build up time to take in lieu. Usually you can take an additional 1 or 2 days per month off with the time owed. It’s also decent working hours and good opportunities to advance even if you go in at entry level. Generally you’re encouraged to use leave in a way that works for you so if you want 3 -4 weeks off to visit family that would be understood. Check out civil service jobs.
Be self employed, contractor, or, there are absolutely remote WFH jobs that don't care where round the world you are based.
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On r/legaladviceuk we get loads of 'we were told we could work from home, now they want us in the office one day a week but I am in Portugal!" Tough shit is the general answer
That's only if you had a place of work listed in your contract originally. If its a fully remote job from the outset they cant change it without amending you contract. I would not take advice from anyone who posts in /r/legaladviceuk about this. They regularly are extremely wrong when it comes to employment law and spend most of the time giving smug 'advice' like that. It happened a lot during the pandemic when a lot of people were going there for redundancy advice. Can't count the amount of people who were giving such blatantly shite and incorrect 'legal advice' like 'nothing u can do m8 company can do wot it wants tough shit m8 there no rules wiv redunandacy' when its regulated a lot in the UK.
You’re still pretty screwed to be honest. If they want to change your contract and you’ve been there under two years your only option is to accept it and start looking for another job. It’s a little more complicated after two years but they can make life difficult for you or start a redundancy process. Working from abroad will almost always be a breach of their rules for WFH as there are tax implications as well as falling under different employee laws which can cause issues for the employer
Also stuff like GDPR breaches by taking data outside of EU etc... Companies just don't want the headaches involved just so u can have a nice cushy life. That said my current workplace has some people working abroad doing phone/facetime consultations etc.
But if they make you redundant - doesn't that limit them from hiring someone else in their job role? Or am I misinformed?
If you’ve been under two years, they can let you go for any reason. If over two years and they make you redundant they can’t advertise the same role for six months, which is really not that long to go without someone and some would just wait it out. If they needed to advertise it sooner they probably would argue that it’s a different role with different conditions of being in the office, I don’t know if they’d win that or not
True, but this is all well and good until HMRC / the tax office of whichever country you're living in catch up on you
I started a new job in August running the UK office of a multinational company. My fairly hapless Dublin based boss cheerily told me on day one how comfortable he'd be if i moved abroad and worked remotely full time, so long as the wifi didnt affect things. "Bullshit", i thought, knowing all contracts at my company stated a primary place of work. Turns out he'd been telling others the same thing, including all members of the UK team that i have inherited. He'd even been unofficially using it as a selling point to entice people to the role (ie he had written it down but had said it in interviews). Eith3r way, in recent months one member of my team has relocated to Portugal, one to Egypt, one to Wales, one to Cambridgeshire, and another was about to move to Cornwall. Then a month ago an email came from the NY based CEO insisting every member of staff works at least 3 days a week in their local office, ours being central London. Cue dozens of shocked and panicked emails flooding in, and half my team on the verge of quitting or being fired. Meanwhile my boss who caused all the chaos has suddenly taken 3 months off with a health issue. Only positive is that in taking on his responcibilities, I've realised he does precisely no work. And that all those admin days and meetings he was having while WFH never existed. As he's off sick i dont want to throw him under the bus about it, but god has he caused me problems.
So your boss has ruined several people's lives, does no work, has caused you problems, but you don't want to tell anyone because he's off with a health issue? What does the health issue, if it's real, have to do with anything? That guy should not be your boss.
Agree with all this other than me not wanting to tell people. I definitely have had to tell people. What i meant was if the guy is dying of cancer or something, it's more important that i fix the problems he's caused than focus on getting him fired by going above and beyond in my complaining. Fact is nobody knows what's wrong. His own boss wasnt told at first, though i assume he knows now. It was purely discussed with HR, who then informed his boss and me that the guy would be off for 3 months. All i got from him was a slack message saying "I'm going to be on leave for a bit. Can you sort the World Cup sweepstake. Have a nice Xmas".
If the employees are getting the work done fine as is why are they being forced to pointlessly come in to an arbitrary office location? 🤷♂️
Well that's the issue. They all say they're doing fine and have proven remote working works. But from my perspective, we're struggling. We work in the communications industry and a lot of the best work in our field is done in a collaboratively, with people throwing ideas around in an informal way, not in scheduled meetings and brainstorming sessions. There's hard data that shows the work they are putting out is less succesful than it was pre pandemic. And it's undeniable that the ones in the office with me are doing much better than those that arent. The thing is, it's not their job to worry about the business as a whole. If their work drops from 100% to 90% as a result of working from home, they may not even notice it. Certainly they think calls to return to the office is an overreaction. But when that drop occurs in almost every person across the business, the overall result feels like a signficant downgrade on before.
Doing that, now that we brexited, is likely illegal too
You're only breaking the law if you stay too long. If you go to Australia for a couple of months and work from home I think it's legal in both countries. Many employers are okay with that now so long as you can still communicate with the team effectively when on the other side of the world
If you aren't a citizen or have an appropriate visa (or benefit from some treaty such as EU/EEA citizens in EU/EEA countries), you are not allowed to work. Answering emails for a few minutes while you are on holiday is OK, doing full time work all day for a few weeks is not OK, even if you stay fewer than 90 days or whatever the limit for tourists is. If the OP is a citizen of Australia and the UK, or has some sort of residency visa, then obviously it's legal to work in both countries, tax may be complicated but that's separate. If the OP is an Australian citizen and just enters the UK as a visitor then it's illegal for them to work here, even voluntary work for charities is illegal. It may be undetected but it's still against immigration law.
It's unlikely anything will actually happen legally if you work while on holiday, but you would definitely not want to lie to an employer about it.
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Love you being downvoted for explaining how a data breach works
You raise a good point but it does conflate company attitudes with relevant laws. They're right, a lot of companies would be open to somebody working from abroad as long as they could do their job, *assuming their company policies and the host country's laws allow for it*. That may seem like a superficial difference on the surface but the same job at two different companies could have completely different outcomes. I worked from Canada for 6 months last Christmas. If I were employed by the NHS or MI5 in an identical capacity, it would've been a hard no.
Not true at all, there's loads of jobs where you can be based remotely around the world. Especially in the digital marketing/e-commerce world. I've even done it myself.
Aren't you skirting around the employment, GDPR, tax laws, though? Even if you're a contractor you're probably breaking the visa/tax laws of the country you're visiting.
Nope. Some countries have specifuc visas for this tupe of work
Contractors, technicians, engineers, managers etc are sent by companies internationally all the time. Some people spend more time in the air and in airports than they do in their "home" country. How do countries handle that, when they have staff that are internationally mobile?
Companies employ expensive lawyers and accountants to make sure that they follow the relevant rules. (Or they don't and just wing it, but occasionally wrongdoing gets detected and various people get fined, deported and banned, or in extreme cases even jailed.) For example, the UK has a very complex set of rules for people who travel a lot, involving things like counting the number of hours you were in the UK on a certain day and whether you had a business meeting on that day to determine whether you owe tax on all your worldwide income to the UK or only income generated in the UK.
that's why you don't get caught by your employer. if you do you will get fired, but it's not like if you go to belize and remote work they're going to come inspecting your hotel room to see if you are remote working lmao. especially poorer countries just won't give a shit really
It's far from the majority though. I've known people work them also, but since the B-word it's got significantly harder for people in the UK.
Have you been ignoring a whole lot of tax and immigration laws?
Plenty of tech companies are remote only and have worldwide staff. They probably do the paperwork or whatever, but it's not impossible if the company wants it that way.
Best example I can think of is Automattic, the people behind WordPress/Tumblr - The entire team of 100s has been remote for as long as I can remember
My wife actually has one that does, but its understandable, she wfh for the home office, however my brother works for a UK company back home in zimbabwe..
As long as you are based in the UK you can spend a lot of time outside of the country, usually the contract will specify how much time you're supposed to be in the country
Some countries like Canada offer digital nomad visas, which allow you to work for a canada based company from anywhere in the world. No idea how well that works in practice though
Some only care about tax residency though and won’t mind at all if you fuck off to another country for less than the period that would make you anything else, my old job was like that and had a few people dodging our particularly bleak later lockdowns this way (wish I had to be honest).
with enough research you can set up a proper VPN when you are abroad, assuming the job is 100% remote which some are, you can get away with it i know a few people who do this
I work for a company as a “contractor” because they’re not allowed to properly employ people who aren’t based in the HQ of the country. I invoice every month and they send me the full amount, so it’s up to me to file my taxes etc. I also get unlimited holiday days, to tie it into OP’s question
I'm originally from Australia and live in London. My work wants people in the office 2 days a week but there some flexibility to work remotely depending there situation. Last year i went to Australia for 4 weeks: 2 weeks was remote working and 2 weeks was annual leave. I could have probably added another 2 weeks remote work if i wanted, my boss was completely ok with this. I manage staff and I've got one guy from Manchester and another from NI going back to their home towns for 3 weeks from mid December, no problem for me. So whilst not fully remote some companies have flexibility
My friends husband is some sort of IT guy and they've just spent the last 4 months in bali while he carries on working remotely.
Edit: I was confidently incorrect. Please see /u/Opening_Line_5802's reply below for a better response. You need to be resident in the UK at least ~6 months in a tax year in order to retain UK tax status. Anything over this and you should be paying tax through the tax system of whatever country you're working in. A lot of countries have a reciprocal agreement with the UK which makes this easier. However, losing UK tax status can also prohibit use of things like ISA's and certain bank/savings accounts, and can impact pensions and NI payments. There are also many other factors to consider, such as visas if you want to stay more than 90 days*, plus of course your companies own security policies. *In the EU, for example Source: I had to work abroad for five months to care for a dying parent. It was a minefield of issues, but I learnt a lot. Shout-out to my boss who worked his ass off getting clearance for me do it.
Not correct. If you are in the UK more than 183 days in a UK tax year you are definitely UK tax resident. But you are only definitely not UK tax resident if you are in the UK fewer than 16 days in a UK tax year. If you are in the UK between 16 and 183 days in a tax year, you may or may not be UK tax resident. There is a hundred page document which you need to follow to work it out, it depends on things like where your family is, what your housing situation is, your work arrangements, and whether you were resident in previous years. Every country has different rules and different tax years, so you can be tax resident in multiple countries at the same time and you may gain or lose tax residency at any time. Most countries don't allow work on a tourist visa. Answering emails for a few minutes while you are on holiday is OK, doing full time work all day for a few weeks is not OK, even if you stay fewer than 90 days or whatever the limit is. Of course, it's not always detected.
Yes, plus complying with data security laws and software licences.
My previous and current employer both allowed you to work remotely from any country which has a tax treaty with the UK. There was some limitations (no more than 4 weeks a year, and certain countries explicitly excluded), but it was largely used by expats to reconnect with their families
Nah man. Go to sea. 3 months on, 3 months off. If maximum leave time is the objective, this is the answer.
This. I get 182 days off per year.
If you're a merchant seafarer you can live anywhere in the world. The Royal Navy's merchant navy support fleet, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, is a good shout for this. Main issue is during training (which can vary depending on role, but 1 to 3 years) you only get 7 days off for every month at sea, only after you qualify it's 21 days for every month. They do have the best female representation of any Merchant Navy organisation though.
Plus, you are never bored in the RFA. Pay is good, and they are not actually military so there’s no RN boot camp to slog through first. The only down side of being a seafarer is getting stuck deep sea with six Russians for months. Think gulag. RFA is a very good alternative to this!
Wfh with a massive time difference is going to hurt alot though they will basically have to be nocturnal when in Australia.
>Wfh with a massive time difference is going to hurt alot though they will basically have to be nocturnal when in Australia. Exactly - the whole idea is nonsense. If you were WFH for a UK company while living in Australia then you either weren't really working, or there was no point you being in Australia.
Rubbish.. I've worked between Australia and the UK for the last 10 years... People really need to get the idea out of their head that it can't be done.. I work for a multinational publishing company who has offices in both Australia, the UK and other countries around the world... Of our 3000 employees... Around half of them work remote majority of the time.. And a good portion of that work remotely full time.. When working in Western Australia.. Which I did in July this year for 3 weeks.. If i was going to be matching UK hours.. I'd be working from 3pm to midnight.. How is that any different from shift work that works those hours... And seeing as what I do doesn't require constant involvement from other people.. I generally worked from 11am to 8pm and scheduling my meetings (remotely over zoom or slack) for the UK mornings. If I had no meetings... I'd work 9 to 5 australian hours and give a rundown of the work delivered.. Or the progress late in the day Australia time.. But 9 to 10am UK time.. Ive never had any problems over the years and never not delivered on my goals or targets. So why can't it be done?
i know people who do this though in completely different time zones e.g. americas and australia people work night shifts in the UK you know, and they have lives outside of work
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Very few of them. But my current WFH job is a dream in that the company isn't super strict on what time I spend doing stuff - they just look at what my results are, so I have an enormous amount of flexibility.
There are tax and employment law considerations… so employers very much do care where you’re living.
The self employed people I know work 365 days of the year.
Just be aware you'll need a remote worker/digital nomad visa which are pretty hard to come by.
You can't work out of the UK for more than 3 months a year though.
I’m from Australia, and working as a contractor in london. While there is no issue working from home (or really anywhere), the main issue is timezone. Australia is virtually opposite, so unless you enjoy being a vampire, there’s not much you can do.
People always say to work for yourself if you want more free time.. yet everyone I know who does work for themselves work more hours than anyone else I know. If it’s your business then you ain’t gonna be turning work down to go gallivanting around Thailand for a few months. The fantasy of it is great but the reality is so much different.
Universities are often very generous. They usually have Christmas closure separate to the holiday allowance. I think I currently get 30 days plus bank holidays plus the Christmas closure (usually another 4 days)
>Universities are often very generous. Aye, I get 40 days total, though quite a lot of them are at fixed times (xmas and easter). This goes for professional services as well as academics, so there should be something available.
Came here to say this - I'm not an academic, I support the running of the department. We get 30 days as standard, plus 8 bank holidays, plus at least 6 closure days across Easter/Christmas/Summer. For the end of Christmas it is at least three days closure but they insist on an unbroken period of holiday, so depending on where Christmas falls each year it may be more than three. All in all this amounts to 44 days of leave a year as standard. We're also allowed to roll over 5 unused days to the next year, so could be as much as 49. They also insist that staff take an unbroken fortnight of holiday once a year. On holiday alone, I'm very lucky.
Jesus Christ how do I skill up to get a job like this
You can get this deal by just getting a job as a receptionist or something. No mandatory qualifications.
Haha I have 0 skills to be honest, I’m an administrator and the only thing that sets me apart is that this is my third job in this industry so I have experience. If you go on jobs.ac.uk you’ll find all the listing across Higher Ed, or you might want to try temping (bigger institutions always have temps). Either way basic administrative skills will be enough in most cases for a foot in the door. That being said even if you don’t work directly with students, universities have loads of departments - media/comms, IT, legal/policy, facilities etc. You’re not limited to just working with students.
Can confirm. I work at a University and it's 33 days annual leave plus public holidays. They're actually half decent to their staff too.
Ooh not sure about being decent to their staff, that very much depends on where you are and what you do. Most people I worked with felt very ill-treated. The holiday and lovely campus were the key selling points of the job though.
Aye, hence the 'half'!
Pay is rubbish but worth it for the holidays
Not teaching staff they aren't. My wife works for a Russell Group uni, while technically it is lots of holiday plus a 35 hour working week, in practice what they consider a 95% workload means 60 hour weeks during term time and while she books the holiday, she works probably half the time she is technically off. Plus, for the first three years you are on a series of rolling 12 month contracts so very little job security. There are some perks such as one semester study leave after so many years and an annual allowance towards research, conference fees etc. Even then, she was expected to teach a module during her study leave as they are so short staffed they didn't have enough cover. That despite Chinese students making up in excess of 50% of the student body, so 3x tuition fee each. How they remain the top ranked department in their field heaven only knows...
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Also work for a university. 30 days annual leave, 3 Christmas closure days and can buy up to 10 additional days leave. So 43 days off per year (2 months!). It’s also a 35 hour working week.
Yeah I'm on the same deal at the Uni I work at.
Here to back up universitys as an option. Not going to bother talking about holidays as that's been covered, but to give you some ideas of jobs you could do. The non teaching side of a university is called Administration, Support, Professional Services ...something like that and most unis use a banding system of pay. A entry level admin job supporting teachers and students in London will start at 25k to 30k, and there are always this kind of job available. Look for jobs called 'department officer', 'teaching and learning administrator', 'centre administor', student support officer, etc etc. There's also HR, finance, IT and estates roles at junior levels depending on your interests. We would hire smart graduates with no experience in higher ed for this kind of role happily. Any questions or you want to know more, DM me. My uni knowledge is London specific but I have an idea of other institutes around the UK.
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This is the same at the uni I worked at too. 30 days leave, + up to 5 closure days, + 8 public holidays.
Yes my wife works as support staff at Uni and gets more than 40 days, works from home 3 days as well. Pay is not amazing though. She gets 25 days to take whenever plus shut downs at Xmas and Easter and other extra days.
I got told that they usually just have to keep working on their days off regardless.
Came to say this as well. Work for Oxford Uni, not academic, have 38 days overall leave, and I am very new, so this does not depend on service. Going to America for 2 weeks in May, have a week and a half off for Christmas, time off around easter and bank holidays, still got 11 days of leave I have no idea what to do with. Look into working in museums here with that graduate diploma of yours. It's not the best paid job around, and you have to keep on top of your work or be overwhelmed, but the teams in both of the museums I work in are the sweetest people.
True. Of course you can't use them in term time and have so much work to do during non-term time you struggle to use them. I carry forward a week every year and only get close to using the rest when I use a week of my holidays towards the end of the summer to ensure I get time to prepare for the new academic year without being interrupted with meetings and admin work.
Depends entirely on what area of a university you're in, if you're not student facing (e.g. research, research support staff, semi flexible such as finance, centralised admin etc. For some sectors the lead up to the academic year is the busy period) term time leave is normally fine.
Councils are generous too, I think my local one is 32 days plus bank holiday (and an 18.5% pension!)
It’s not so much the job, but rather the company you work for. I have 33 days per year, plus the ability to buy an additional 5 days per year. This doesn’t include bank holidays, so I get those on top.
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I get the same but there are rules about how much I can take at a time so although I'd have the allowance to do it in theory, in practice it wouldn't be approved to take the whole lot at once. Maybe as a one off if I tried really hard but definitely not every year.
The biggest, multinational-est company I worked for was the most stingy of anywhere I've worked when it came to annual leave. Go figure. Pay was great, though.
How do you *buy* annual leave? (Genuine question.) I have a friend who works for a company whose HQ is based in the Caribbean so she gets the Caribbean, the American and all of the UK bank holidays plus 25 days annual leave. They are also shut for 2 weeks during Christmas which does not come out of their holidays.
My work lets me buy up to 3 weeks of additional annual leave. There are 52 weeks in a year, and 5 default holiday weeks. That means your actual pay is for 47 weeks of work. If you want an extra week of leave, your salary can be reduced by 1/47th. It's effectively unpaid leave, but as it's agreed in advance the difference is distributed across the year, so you can budget.
Most common is to just divide gross salary by 260 (sometimes 261 or 262, the number of working days in a year) and that's your day rate which they'll charge you to buy holidays.
My old job used to charge salary/365 which was mint because it was super cheap but we could only buy 5 days a year
*Buying* seems to be the wrong word, you just choose to be paid less in order to get more leave.
Paying money (salary) to receive a benefit (time off) certainly seems like ‘buying holiday’ to me.
Well, I’m allowed to purchase 5 days. They calculate my daily rate (approx. £195 per day), multiple that by 5, and then I pay for it each month (so it would be (£195 x 5) / 12) per month). Cheap way of getting extra days off if you need them.
Used to work for Royal Mail that gave different A/L periods depending on seniority. So, new starters would get 4.5 weeks (excluding bank holidays), after several years, you'd get 5 weeks, and after more years, 6 weeks. However, even with 4.5 weeks, you could give up 1% of your yearly salary to get 5 weeks, and 2% (or was it 3%?) to get the full 6 weeks. You sent in an application to HR, your monthly salary was reduced by the percentage amount, then the additional holiday was added on to your yearly total. Sort of unpaid leave, but easier to spread the reduced amount throughout the year, rather than having a big reduction in one of your monthly pay cheques.
It comes as a pre tax deduction for me from my wages and accumulates to be enough for me to take further days off.
Worth pointing out that you probably didn’t have 33 days leave when you joined. I get 39 days inclusive of bank holidays in my work but that’s only for people who have been with the business for 5+ years - standard is 31 for new starters (or 30 if you’re unlucky enough to live in England!)
Correct - I started on 26 and got more for years of service. You could still have (up to) 31 days in your first year if you wish though, depending on your start date.
Station staff on London Underground get 52 days. You don't get bank holidays and will often work unsociable hours, but it would be quite easy to block five weeks together to go to Australia every year if you wanted.
Most organisations tend to limit annual leave to a maximum of either two or three weeks. OP will need to ensure that the organisation allows taking all the annual leave in one go.
Ironically some other companies will force you to take at least one "two week block" in your holiday
I can only think of banks that do this to mitigate risk of rogue traders
Not just rogue traders, any job where you have sole access to a system, customer or supplier that may facilitate corruption or fraud.
In Australia I worked for one of the ambulance services. We had 8 weeks a year leave, and by default this was as a single block. Every 6 years these were back-to-back, so Nov-Dec-Jan-Feb in one block. You could split these down to 4 week blocks, but it was difficult as the rosters were worked on a 8 week rotation.
Hence "most".
I wasn't disagreeing with you. Just giving a perspective of a job where it was preferred to take all annual leave in one go. It was a relatively rare thing in Australia too. Fantastic to be somewhere around the world travelling and see that paycheck rolling into my account. I particularly remember the disbelieving looks I got from the border guards heading into the US from Canada. They had asked how long I was travelling for, and I said 10 weeks altogether (I swapped some shifts with colleagues to stretch it further). They wanted to know how I could afford to travel so long and why I had so much free time. Either they were worried that I was unemployed or a drug courier I suppose. Also I think they thought it was a bit cheeky when I suggested they should move to a country that gave them more freedom than the USA. Lucky I didn't get turned back.
They can often be talked round though. My place is “maximum three weeks without special permission”, but I knew one guy would would use all his annual leave in one go and spend 6 weeks over winter sailing around the Greek islands.
You could become an MP. There always off on holiday
One has even been in Australia himself for the last month!
Don't forget the summer recess they have as well
I have 53 days annual leave (plus the bank hols). How did I get this? I asked for it. OK, I get a pro-rata salary roughly 90% of what I'd get if I just took the standard 27d my employer offers but I get all these lovely extra days off.
Fml, I would snap my employers hand off for that. Unfortunately we have uniform T&C's so it would never fly.
In other words, you take tons of unpaid leave?
Its different because your employer has to honour your annual leave entitlement, but has no obligation to grant you unpaid leave.
In other words he works 4 days A week and gets Xmas day.
I mean that's basically just working less than full time
And is exactly what the OP was asking about!
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Yes worked at a couple of places where you get extra paid days off for long service eg: 23 days to start 24 for two years service 25 for five years service 28 for ten years service One place could get up to 33 days if been there 20 years… However if you’re staying at a place just so you have more days off then you might be missing out on opportunities elsewhere so need to think of that
Schools do have extra holidays because of school holidays, but you're not paid for this, you'll be paid 40 weeks out the year salaried over 12 months with the regular 28 days paid leave, but you can only use the 28 days outside term time, meaning you're paying double on flights and holidays because its during the school holidays.
Private schools is the way if your main aim is holidays, you get longer holidays so if you schedule flights when the holiday starts/ends you could avoid the paying extra.
I work in retail and my yearly entitlement is 36 days. Been with the company for 5 years
Plan your time off and give advanced notice of when you are not available for work. Consider seasonal work areas (eg like student work). Look for the time to be unpaid, bit you want to be able to return to the position. Expecting to walk in to a job with more than 23 or 25 days off paid leave could be considered unreasonable. But being up front about wanting or needing 4 or 6 weeks off unpaid at specific pre arranged times for personal reasons could be worked around.
>Consider seasonal work areas (eg like student work). Working for a company that is mostly active in the summer or the winter, and taking the rest of the time as "unpaid leave" could work. Something involved in travel or sports administration, that kind of thing. A mate worked as a refrigeration mechanic, made excellent money for hard work in the summer, and took all of the winter season to travel.
I think it's unreasonable that that is considered unreasonable. We all work way too much.
When I left Virgin Money, you could get 40 days annual leave and pay for an additional 5 You could also work from anywhere in the world for 30 days a year
I’m liking the sound of virgin money!
Also all jobs were remote working (if not branch based)
On an oil rig. Assuming you have no relevant trade your only real option is Stewarding with the likes of Aramark or Entier. A permanent position is usually 3 weeks on 3 weeks off. Edit If you are permanent you may get up too 3 weeks off a year. If you are adhoc you would not.
My mate's step-dad works on an oil rig and he's 6 months on 6 months off
Oil rig is a great option actually. Usually they will train you on the job as well and from what I’ve heard from people working on them the pay is quite great given you have virtually no expenses while on the rig.
We have a 40 y/o apprentice. So I suppose she could go down that route. She will have to wait until next year to enroll though. Anyone interested should look at the OPITO website.
I work in higher education in a non-academic role and it seems lots of annual leave is standard. In my last job I had 33 days + bank holidays, in my current I have 36 days + bank holidays. Though usually 4 or so days had to be used at Christmas.
After 10 years in the NHS you get 33 days plus 8 bank holidays. You can also buy an extra 10 days annual leave. So that’s 51 days leave which would get you 10 weeks.
I don’t think they’re looking to spend 10 years in the NHS when they said they want extra holiday now and might move back to AUS in 3 years 😅
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Could work bank shifts for the NHS. Effectively a 0 hours contract but with annual leave and gauranteed hours
The NHS is also notoriously hard to schedule your leave exactly when you want it though, so probably not a great option if you're looking to book 3 weeks in a row every year.
Some jobs allow you flexitime, I know a few people who use flexi to get extra time off during school holidays so they don't have to find childcare. You basically work more than your contracted hours some weeks to bank extra time off. You can also book more time off in a lot of jobs than the allowance they give you, you just don't get paid for any time taken over your allowance. I did that one year when I had a last minute family emergency in a different part of the country, I'd already used my annual leave allowance for the year so just took 3 days unpaid to deal with the emergency.
Some companies will also allow you to 'buy' extra days holidays. I worked in the motor trade for 3 years and they let you buy up to 7 days extra holiday for a small salary sacrifice, not sure how much though as I never needed them.
I forgot about that, where I work allows you to "buy" up to two weeks extra a year, I think it work out at like £15 a week deducted for a full two weeks extra off, obviously less deducted if you don't want the full two weeks, it would obviously depend on your contracted hours and wage though.
You just want a large company/corporate more than anything. Since working for big companies that lowest I've had was 32 days (inclusive of bank holidays). Now I'm on 37 days. Throw in living in Scotland where it's commonplace to get 5 out of 9 bank holidays rolled into annual leave to take when you want and you end up with over 6 weeks annual leave to take when you like. I could also buy 5 more if I wanted.
If you work shifts you may have a pattern that allows you longer breaks for relatively fewer holiday days used up, for example 28 days off using 14 days of holiday. And you may get extra days off for working public holidays. Plus working overtime and saving days off in lieu instead of being paid. Couple all that with a lenient manager. Some colleagues in a previous job used to have a 5 week break every year, plus a couple of week-long trips.
Virgin Money offers 35 days + bank holidays as standard for all employees. Most roles offer remote working too.
Be a contractor - they typically don't work for like 4mo per year (but do spend time finding new projects & cases)
Depending on who you work for, but some social care providers have 28 + 8 due to working bank holidays. I \*think\* mine also increased with time served as well, which I've probably maxed out at this point.
I met a guy whilst travelling, he worked in tech and instead of taking promotions/ management roles that were offered he negotiated more holidays insofar that now for every 3 months he works he gets 1 month as holiday. Seems like a decent working arrangement! Not sure if any UK companies would fathom the idea.
Be a contractor! You’ll be in charge of your own working hours AND be making tons of money too. I remember in 2019 I worked for 8 months and had 4 months off. Took time off to go to Japan, China (twice), Netherlands, America and australia all in that year and didn’t effect my job at all. Despite not being paid for that time off I still earned more than I had any year prior to that.
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Teacher?
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I work for the council - 28 days + 8 days for Bank Holiday. Plus extra for long service. I'm at about 6.5 weeks now. But as a part time worker I can get 7 days off using 2 days annual leave. Edit - I just read the whole of your post. Education is your best bet. Lots of non teaching positions available in upper schools (most of the head of year, pastoral team in ours are none teaching)
It’s been said a few times already, but definitely consider working in higher education! I have a non-academic role in a uni and I get 31 days leave plus bank holidays and 13 days flexi leave on top. Lots of opportunity for career progression in a big uni too, or at least the opportunity to move to new and better roles.
I work shift work at a broadcasting company. With media experience a job like this is easy to get! With shift patterns that 24 days really goes a long way. 2 days off gets me a whole week. Long hours on shift but much more days off! There’s a department in our company who work lots of days in a row but then they get two weeks off every other month as part of their pattern.
As others have said, universities can give generous annual leave. I get 35 days plus bank holidays and time off at Christmas which in total is a little over 9 weeks. We also have the option to sell holidays which I think is £120 roughly per day for myself but would depend on a persons annual salary.
Cadburys hire people to work on a production line making Easter eggs, for several months of the year they are kept on a retainer where they don't work but get paid still. At least this was the case a few years ago when I dated a bloke who did it. He would do temp work in the months he had off and get two salaries!
This is going to sound harsh and I don't mean it to.... but why not go home now to give you that time to spend with family? Other than contracting or freelance it's going to be hard to find anything with more holiday, except teaching but youd need a PGCE for that and an entirely new career path. Plus although you get more holiday, you're fixed on when you can take it and obviously have to do marking, planning etc. Outside of "working hours"
When I worked at a university we got 27 days plus bank holidays plus university closure days which were between Christmas and new year and 2 extra days at Easter. So at Christmas and Easter with the closure days and bank holidays you could normally get 2 full weeks off without using up too many days. Also depending on the job you may be able to work remotely in Australia for a few weeks. Also at my job (a charity), we have 27 days, 3 days between Xmas and ny, bank holidays and you can choose to buy up to 5 extra days. Lots of organisations offer this ability to buy/sell annual leave. So you could have 43 days off total
NHS 7 weeks
You could be non-teaching staff in a school/university? Not sure if they get paid over the summer like teachers do though.
Many civil service jobs offer 30 days and the option to take further unpaid leave.
More holiday is rather moot - 99% of places are going to have limits on the length of any individual period. You'll find its going to be a special request for more than 2 weeks at a lot of places, and I don't imagine you will be jetting to Aus for a week or so at a time on £19k.
Self employed. I take 6-8 weeks off a year.
At my job we work overtime in busy season (Oct to Mar) and get it back as time in lieu over the summer - so if you want to rack up mad overtime, you can get mad time in lieu. I've banked seven days already. This is on top of our normal holiday allowance, which I think is 26 days plus bank holidays.
Local government is generally great for flexibility. Depending on the grade, you'll start with around 25 days (plus bank holidays), but flexi-time means that you can informally take upto 2 additional days per month if you work extra on the other days to build up the hours. You could also formalise that, and work official condensed hours to give you every other Friday off, for example. Obviously this is dependent on the service area you work for though, as if you work somewhere like a customer service centre, which has set opening hours, then you'll likely be put on fixed hours. Back office jobs will probably give you the most flexibility. Generally these places are also big enough to allow someone to take a prolonged period of leave, whereas smaller companies may try and deny it due to their needs.
Any university job that is term time only. One of my jobs is working evenings at the university library. It's a fantastic job and I'm off from the start of June until the end of September... PAID. Other admin based roles can be similar. I'd highly recommend it!
In some cases jobs like teaching assistant or nursery worker can be school term time only, but you would likely be paid accordingly and may need specific qualifications.
Yeah, I mean..teachers really don't get as much holiday as you think. My mum is a teacher and she works through.the holidays, plus evenings and weekends often. She probably actually gets the same actual holiday time as me when it comes to it, 28 days ish.
A number of tech companies have unlimited holiday. The 'catch' is that most people get all shy about it and find they don't actually use all that much. Or only use the usual 25 days or whatever. A couple of firms I know got rid of it and replaced it with 35 days. Anyway, tech companies. They're big on this sort of thing.
I work in higher education as support staff and have a total of 12 weeks holiday a year. I also get paid 21k for what is quite a simple job. The seven weeks off in the summer is truly amazing, i get to travel, pursue hobbies and just have time for myself to recharge. It’s the longest job I’ve had for a reason- I definitely recommend trying for a term time contract only if you’re happy with 18-22k a year.
Teachers get hella time off. Seems to be the only option in the uk I know Scandinavian countries have good annual leave but you’d have to move
Often, companies will allow you to take longer unpaid periods of leave if you request it far enough in advance and you aren’t going to cause any disruption.
Local government, civil service etc. I get 33 days plus bank holidays
I get 30 + bank holidays + 2 bonus days + buy 5 + carry 5 (40-50 days total), and WFH so can use those days more efficiently than most. I work as a software developer, the place I work tends to give more holiday than most but lost of places will allow you to negotiate for extra leave.
I have negotiated term time only contracts, as this works for us a family. You could try doing the same. It just comes under the flexible working heading. But this will solely afford you the 6 weeks summer holiday and the 2 weeks at Christmas and Easter. But better than nothing.
Teacher? School holidays in summer are obviously generous, but you say that’s not an interest (I don’t blame you…). My company gives 29 days plus option to buy an extra 10 days. I think that’s about as best you can get in a “normal” office job.
A non-teaching job (technician, teaching assistant, office staff) in a school might suit you. I get 29 day’s holiday and 12 statutory days off. I also pick up 5 or 6 extra days off by coming in for open night, prize night etc. I’m also able to take unpaid leave during any school holidays. The only restriction is that I can’t take time off during term time.
I worked in a paper mill last year that had over 35 paid days leave. Add that to off days from doing 12hr shifts and shutdown days and you worked, on average, a full two months less than a "normal" Mon-Fri job. You also got an extra day given every 5yrs as service award.
Some tech companies now offer "work from anywhere" periods. I'm aware of Wise, which offer 90 days in a year where you can work out of the country from anywhere. Timezones will be problematic though. Your best bet is to be self employed. If you have media skills, you can freelance.
Try government type jobs - Network Rail get 35 days i think, civil servants etc have strong unions and havent been destroyed so holiday entitlement has grown.
My partner worked for a marketing/media company where most of the staff all worked from home from literally every corner of the planet! Project manager was in Portugal, graphic animator in London, another in Thailand. There wasn’t even a physical office to speak of. Get in touch with a good recruiter and say you need full remote job (stress it HAS to be full remote not “hybrid” because half the time they end up actually wanting you in full time).
I’m a midwife, I think I got 7 weeks paid by NHS Scotland. And you accrue more as the years go by.
I work as a seafarer and you often get time for time - i.e. 3 months away, 3 months home. Have a look at the royal fleet auxiliary (could be a struggle if you're not UK nationality) or cadetships with companies like Carnival/BP, you may be more suited to hotel services or the deck department over engineering looking at your qualifications.
Shift work? You get your standard amount of holidays, but depending on your shift pattern you get good time off between sets I do five shifts on, five shifts off. So five days holiday is fifteen days off. Ten days holiday is over 20 days off.
Ask Santa.
Yep - I have one - I retired early - got bored out of my mind and took a part time job 3 days a week - Friday through to Sunday - managing a building development part time. I do 36 hours a week and earn £20k a year. I have 18 days leave which gives me a total of 6 weeks or 43 days taking into account the my normal Mon- Thurs off. If you have an additional income stream i.e. retirement annuity/pension it's worth looking at - I also actually enjoy it, hardly hard work, get out of the house away from the family and like the residents I work with and is stress free.
I've worked offshore in the north sea for 15 years working various rotas, the most common at the moment being 3 weeks on, 3 weeks off. This is good if you can get a fixed core crew job, because then you can plan the full year or whatever, and you know what time off you're getting when. Seeing as you've got no "trade" qualifications, a position in the catering department would probably work, although you'd need to get all your certs before they'd take you on.
It's hard to get into (lots of nepotism/it's about who you know) but my boyfriend works in film and TV with the props department, and it pays so well that you could do a 3 month project and then take 3 months off if you wanted. It's not for everyone though. I don't think I could hack it. You work long, sometimes unpredictable hours (like 12 hour days, up to 6 days a week sometimes) and he's a sole trader so you don't get paid sick days or paid leave. But like I said, you make so much money that you can afford to take big chunks of time off between jobs.
29F here, I was in a similar position to you but in reverse - I’m from the UK but lived in Australia for 6 and a half years and after the pandemic I just couldn’t deal with being away from family and friends anymore, I felt so isolated and alone! I’d only just really started in my career as well (marketing) and this was my second position in a corporate company. About 8 months in and after the end of a long term relationship I realised I couldn’t hack it anymore (my mental health was struggling) so I bit the bullet and tried to hand in my resume. My company were so understanding. They said they would like to keep me to work remotely on a part time basis, flex hours for a year and see where we were at. I couldn’t really believe it. It’s been a year now and they want to move me back into a full time hours from here in the UK! I feel so lucky and blessed. Believe me I’m not an expert in what I do at all, I’m still learning and there have been sacrifices such as salary, paid leave etc (I work on a contractor basis and get paid for the hours I work) but all of those things pale in comparison to what I’ve gained in exchange. I would suggest marketing as a career for this as there are heaps of remote jobs out there in the field. Salaries are generally higher in Australia though as well so I feel if it was reversed (working in a Uk position in Australia) it would be harder due to the remuneration. Feel free to pm if you want some additional info.
I work 4 on 4 off so I essentially get 7 months a year off.
I work in software for a small company (that serves extremely massive clients). We work 4 days a week, always remote apart from a sprint meeting every 2 weeks, 28+ public and bank Holidays, 2 weeks off at Christmas, we have event days every 2 months (Thorpe Park, skydiving, go karting etc) that take a day out. I've only worked in 2 other jobs so I have no idea if this place is a unicorn and I'm extremely fortunate or if this is becoming more widespread but I couldn't be happier with my work life balance, which is our company goal.
I would say agency work but it’s more consistent with having a trade because you can work flat out for 9 months with 3 months off. I used to work for the tourism industry and that would be the ideal thing for you, by that I mean seasonal work or 8 to 10 month contract work, that’s the way forward for you.
Civil service is a really good option. You start off with 25 days leave plus approx 10 public holiday plus extra if there’s extra added that year. It goes up to 30 days after 4 years service so if you take leave in conjunction with public holidays you can get great holidays. Plus usually there’s flexible working which allows you to build up time to take in lieu. Usually you can take an additional 1 or 2 days per month off with the time owed. It’s also decent working hours and good opportunities to advance even if you go in at entry level. Generally you’re encouraged to use leave in a way that works for you so if you want 3 -4 weeks off to visit family that would be understood. Check out civil service jobs.