Compressed Hours

[Kp21]

I’m a grandparent and I have compressed my 37 hours per week from 5 days to 4 and have lost 7 days annual leave from 33 to 26 as I now work 4 days.
I think this is unfair as I still work full time hours
Is this correct?
I would appreciate any advice

At my work your annual leave would be worked out in hours so you wouldn't lose any.

A week for you is now 4 days so if you got 33 days you would get just over 8 week s a year which is more than than a full timer. As you do compressed hours a days holiday will pay for the additional hours e.g 10 hrs instead of 7 so you are still getting the same.

Surely it makes sense as each day is now ‘worth’ more than it was previously, e.g. you are having 9.5 hours off per day off rather than 8 hours or whatever it was previously.

I dont think this is right. You are still working full time.

I did a similar thing-full time hours over 4.5 days. The only difference was that my leave then got given in hours rather than days. And then I took it in hours. So a standard leave day would have been 7.5 hours, but I had to take it as 8 hours as that is what my new normal working day was. So it did actually work out to a few less days a year, as my days were now worked out as more hours than a standard day.

Could it be something like that that has led to it looking like u have less days leave? Have u spoken to your line manager or HR and asked them to explain it?

I think it depends on how your holidays are worked out. When I changed to compressed hours (NHS) my number of hours of annual leave was unchanged. However, if you think about it in days then yes, I have less of them. 1 ‘day’ is now 9.5 hours(ish) rather than 7.5. It doesn’t have a huge impact as to take a full week off I only need to use 4 days rather than 5, which still equates to the 37.5 hours I used to take on standard hours.

As long as the 26 days is the same in hours as your original 33 then yes, it’s correct.

37/5 = 7.4 hours per day times this by 33 = 244.2annual leave hours.
37/4= 9.25 hours per day times this by 26 = 240.5annual leave hours.

So yes you are losing out on a small amount. You could ask for it to be calculated in hours but you would only get 26 full days of leave.

I think it is fair. You now only need to take four days of annual leave to get a week off.

If you think of your leave in the number of days needed to take a week off, you should get the same number of weeks off whether you work 4 or 5 days.

33 days/5 days per week = 6 weeks 3 days off per year.
26 days/4 days per week = 6 weeks 2 days off per year.

So you are losing out possibly by half a day off per year because full time you have 6.6 weeks off per year, compressed hours, you have 6.5 weeks off per year

But yes, many employers work in hours of leave per year for anyone who doesn't work the standard number of days/hours per week to make sure there isn't any unfairness.

Yes I think it's correct and you're still getting approx 6.5 weeks off a year. If you had 33 days off but only needed 4 days annual leave to take a week off then you'd be getting over 8 weeks leave a year which wouldn't be fair on everyone else.

As everyone else has said... your new days are longer so you're basically getting the same in hours. That's why in the NHS we moved from annual leave in days to it being calculated in hours.

It is right if holidays are taken in days, it equates to the same amount of time off as 4 days booked off is now a week .

If your A/L is worked out in days rather than hours then surely it's obvious you'll be entitled to fewer days now? You work one fifth fewer days than an uncompressed f/t colleague would.

Because of your compressed hours, one A/L day now counts as 1.25x what it did before (because a day is a quarter of your working week rather than a fifth).

So if you want to have a whole week off work, you now only need to use 4 A/L days, whereas before you'd use 5.

If you retained the same entitlement in terms of the number of days, then when you took a 'day' off, you'd be taking (e.g) 10 hours, where a colleague would only be taking 8, which is clearly not fair.

I used to work compressed hours and yes, its correct. it's easier to think of in terms of hours.

If you only need to take 4 of the new holiday 'days' to get a week off then no, it seems fair. Otherwise they would need to calculate it in hours or you would need to take more than a single day's holiday to get a day off.

As everyone else says, if they stick to days it's right. My leave was annualised when I condensed, so I got the days converted to hours instead. Still the same amount, just a different way of stating it.

Before, 33 days = 6.6 weeks off per year.

Now = 26 days = 6.5 weeks off per year.

It's actually worked out basically the same. You get 6 weeks and 2.5 days holidays a year now. Before you got 6 weeks and 2.5 days basically.

From kp21

I was and still am a little confused as a colleague who works 30 hours over 4 days ends up with 25 days which seems unfair

But the colleagues ‘days’ are only 7.5 hours long. Yours are around 9.5 therefore you cannot directly compare the amount of days. You need to think of your holiday entitlement in hours.

Thank you for the advice and explications, much appreciated

Explications

Ooops that's what I get for typing without my glasses