Hr question - annual leave

[moana1234]

I am bamboozled!!! Colleague ranting today as they have 28 days holiday like the rest of us full timers but he works different hours each day - 7.5 hours mon, 8 hours tues-thurs then 5.5 hours fri - he books A LOT of fridays off so has apparently been getting them passed by using 0.75 days AL per friday instead of 1 day. However in my opinion that should mean he has to OVER compensate on his longer 8 hour days but he hasn't been - just using 1 days AL for these. But surely this means he is ending up with more holiday than the rest of us by doing this?! He disagrees of course! By the way a normal standard working day is 7.5 hours. Please can someone help explain who is correct here!

I think it's none of you business
It's between him and HR/his line manager

There’s too many unknowns to know if this is okay or not.

Is your AL not measured in hours on HR system?

Well yes it isn't, however very unfair to the OP!

Yes we have this in my team. As your AL is calculated in days rather than hours, he should be using one day AL for whichever day he is booking off.

Ideally the system should allow to book in hours instead of days

He needs to use the right amount of hours to take a day off.

So if he takes Friday off it costs him 5.5 hours
If he takes Wednesday off it costs him 8 hours.

If he takes a week off it costs him 37 hours

If he is really doing 7.5 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 5.5 he's half an hour short a week, so he'll get paid slightly less than full time and his annual leave worked out in hours will be 37/37.5 x 28 x 7.5.

It would be best if his annual leave was recorded and booked in hours, not days.

Ours are recorded in hours ( nhs) but I wouldn’t get involved….not your issue

I would be pissed off at this and it would be my business.

Why should OP lose out because no one in HR can do maths or fractions.

If you have variable hours working then you obviously have to work out leave in hours for that person.

Not to do so just gives the employer issues with grievances.

He needs his AL calculated in hours.

For our PT employees our annual leave is in hours and we have to identify how many hours we work on each of our working days and that number of hours is deducted for each annual leave request. For example Monday is 7.9 hours for me but Thursday is 7.75 so I use less annual leave for each Thursday booked.

does your company not have hours for PT staff? I would say you need to stay out of it though as it’s a HR/systems issue

Yep- should be hours. Think about it this way, if he used all his AL on his 8 hour days he would be getting 224 hours holiday per year whilst you get 210. That’s the equivalent of almost two days extra.
You need to raise this with your line manager and if this doesn’t work take it to HR. If they don’t do anything informally then you’re within your rights to raise a grievance as you are being treated less favourably.

His holiday should be in hours, both for this reason and because he will need bank holidays reflecting in hours too

Whilst it's technically not your business, it would piss me off. If he only books Fridays off then he'd be getting over 37 days leave, instead of the 28 everyone else is getting.

I work different hours every day. My leave is calculated in hours. I do tend to take more leave on my shorter days but it's reflected properly for the amount of hours I have actually had off.

His holiday should be in hours so if he works a 0.75 day (which if full time roughly equates to 5.5 hours) that's all the AL he has to take.

If he's added it up accurately, then actually he's not trying to get extra, he's trying to make sure it's right.

I read the start of the OP and thought 'oooh best to take the longest days off then', but I still think he's right classing 7.5-8 hours as 1 whole day and 5.5-6 hours as three quarters of a day. The longest days shouldn't use more of his leave.

Probably most transparent to just record in hours.

Do you book time off in hours? If so then yes he should book off the number of hours he would work on a Friday.

i booK annual leave off in hours and work different amounts on different days but I’ve agreed that I’ll book it off as 7hrs no matter which day and then adjust my week accordingly as otherwise our office attendance tracker gets screwed up and if I take a shorter day off then it thinks I should be in the office more.

so in your colleagues example i would book 7hrs off, take 5.5 of them on the Friday and then take 1.5hrs on another day that week so ensure I received the full amount of time I’d effectively bought by booking a day off.

likewise if I book 7hrs off on a day I actually work 9.5 then I make up time later on in the week for the 2.5hrs I owe the company.

not a chance would I book 7hrs off on a 5.5hr day and suck up the loss of 1.5hrs.

if your company books annual leave in days and half days then firstly how is booking a quarter of a day off? But also, yes you should raise it as it means he gets more annual leave than he’s entitled to.

Yep just convert to hours. So if your standard day is 7.5 hours he gets 210 hours annually.

If he takes Friday off he uses 5.5 hours. If Tuesday he uses 8 hours.

I disagree it's none of your business. It does mean he gets more holiday if he only uses 0.75 of a day and mostly books Fridays. It's very simple to overcome and make fair.

Sorry the above applies If he books his long days not Fridays.

If he chooses to book mostly Fridays then that's fine in hours as he has already compensated by working the longer days the rest of week so his working hours are the same.

However for keeping it straight it should be in hours.

Doing it this way would mean he's only booking 4.75 days leave to take 5 days off though.

I think both you and him aren’t understanding and he’s actually slightly worse off. Unless I’m the one missing something!?

He works 31.5 hours Monday - Thursday. A regular working day is 7.5 hours so 75% of that is 5.625 hours. Which is more than his 5.5 hours he’s due to work on a Friday. Technically he’s down by 7.5 minutes.

True, it's not going be easy to round it to the nearest 5 or 0 I guess, which is why he'd need to do it accurately.

I take it back that he shouldn't equate it to above 1 for the longest days. It sounds like it would average out but doesn't quite.

He works 37 hours a week. So an average of 7.4 hours per day. So a Monday should be 1.013 days, Tue-Thu should be 1.081 and Friday should be 0.743?

Assuming his holidays are recorded in hours then it’s totally right and fair.
I used to work long days Monday - Wed and short days Thur & Friday (to do school pick up). In the school holidays, I would book Thur & Fridays off, I got an extra couple of ‘days’ off doing this but made no sense paying for childcare on my short days when it was a day rate.

I used to work about 75% hours but over 5 days. It was easier all round for me to be given the full time 5 days allowance meaning regardless of the hours I worked on one day, it was still a days leave.

Unless you know all the details it's impossible to know if it's unfair or not.

But it sounds like his leave may well be processed in hours.

I hope you focus as much on the job that you're paid to do as you do on someone else's business.

If he works different hours on different days then his annual leave should be calculated in hours rather than days.

Or as he works 5 days he should be deducted 1 days holiday regardless of the number of hours worked each day.