Being a manager can be a double edged sword. While you have more job security and responsibility, sometimes you have to be the bearer of bad news.

Part of being a manager is protecting your employees and making sure they have the resources and time that they are legally supposed to have according to their contracts.

For this manager, he thought his team had certain holidays off, but according to HR, they don’t.

Now, he has to decide how to tell, or if he should tell, his workers that they won’t get paid if they take these holidays off.

He’s looking for advice or work-arounds for this problem, and Reddit had the answers.

Let’s get into it…

I now have to inform my team they don’t get paid holidays or time off.

I am stuck in a classic middle management position where I’m doomed both ways.

My company recently laid off a bunch of people to hire international workers for cheap, before putting me in charge of one of those teams.

That’s a lot of pressure on the manager.

However, it is quickly becoming clear that they weren’t totally upfront about the terms.

Either that, or American employment practices are taking everyone by surprise.

When my team informed me of their country’s holiday schedule through their international staffing agency, HR quickly punched back and stated that since they’re technically contract workers, they can only be paid for time they work.

That’s not going to sit well with the workers…

That means any holidays or days off get scratched from their pay.

I understand the policies are what they are, but they definitely weren’t properly communicated to my team, or to me, upfront.

Now I have to decide whether to tell my team the holidays I granted are rescinded, or to just not say anything this time. Nobody is monitoring anything we’re doing anyway.

The funny part is if nobody had said anything, neither me, my team, or HR would be any the wiser to any of it.

Let’s get into the comments and see if they have any good advice.

This person has a more positive outlook for the employees.

While others have advice for the manager and how to inform his employees.

Several people mentioned that the contracts are important to look at.

While others think going straight to legal would be the smartest thing.

This manager is in a sticky situation.

It sounds like he should check out the contracts for his employees to see what their rights are.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.