If I switch to working compressed hours, 10 days in 9, will I end up with less days in annual leave?

[SocksTalk]

I'm guessing it will but how does it work?

I normally work 37.5 hours and get 26 days annual leave.

Help!

I don’t work a Monday and end up with more holdiays due to this. Bank holidays are pro rata and included in the holiday calc so your holiday allowance then has to be used to cover bank holidays too. So I have to use 3 to cover the Christmas period as they fall on my working days.

It because if person A had a Friday off they would get a lot more bank holidays paid time off than if person B took a Monday off.

So you will get 90% of your holiday allowance and bank holidays.

Does the BH thing only apply if you work somewhere where BH's are included in your annual leave calculations? Everywhere I've ever worked they've been two separate things, so neither 7.5 nor 8.33 would come out of your AL allowance for a BH.

Yes, if you don't get paid for bank holidays, then you either have to work them, or use some of your normal leave allowance to cover your absence.

You don't get 'more holidays'. You just get more hours of your holiday allowance that you can choose to allocate.

Employers can direct all of your annual leave if their policies say so. Most employers allow some choice, but they don't have to.

I'm still confused!

Surely the day I have off, say every second Monday, I don't have to book that as leave if it's a Bank holiday as I will be working up those hours by working longer during the next 9 days.

No you won’t book it as leave but if it’s already your day off you’ll get the hours back (as otherwise you’re not getting the benefit of the bank holiday). So whatever hours you would have worked on that day, you’ll get back in your holiday entitlement.

But equally for bank holidays that you are working for, they’ll only give you the holiday hours for a standard working day and then take the rest from your “free choice leave” hours.

Being off on Mondays you may well get more “free choice” hours because of all the hours added back in for the bank holidays.

I should add though not all workplaces do this, I know someone with Fridays off who gets no hours back if it’s a bank holiday (which always seemed very unfair to me). However no hours are taken off for any of the other bank holidays either.

HR here and you're correct. I always advise staff to have Mondays as their non working day as it works better for them in terms of leave allowances.

The easiest way to do it is to add your annual leave entitlement and your public holiday entitlement together and then convert the days to hours.

Then record every day you take off whether that’s a public holiday or an annual leave day. If the public holiday falls on a day you don’t work then you don’t record it.

The only thing you will need to do is record the day as your compressed hour day. For example, a standard day in my organisation is 7.4 hours. My compressed day is 8.22 hours.

Therefore, every a/l or public holiday day I take is recorded on my leave form as 8.22 hours and deducted from the overall combined total.

Thank you. That sounds reassuring.

I work 37 hours per week and compress 5 days into 4, so work 9 hrs 15 mins each day. As previous posters have said, you get the full time leave allowance but in hours, and then take 9.25 hours off for each day. All totally fair!

No. I work like this. Can't book AL on NWD as not at work but can recommend a day off every fortnight. If I could afford to I would compress further into 8 days!

No, I did this. Your hours are the same, ust condensed into 9 days, so same entitlement, just calculated in hours. To make it work I had slightly longer days, only 30 minutes lunch, one Friday finish at 2pm (started 8am each day) with no lunch, second Friday non working.

If you are working full time hours across 4 days per week and full time workers get 6 weeks annual leave (30 days if working 5 days a week) then it is quite correct for your annual leave to be 24 days rather than 30 because if you had 30 you would be able to take 7.5 weeks off. So long as you are deducted yoir annual leave as 4 days taken if you take 4 days off this is fine.

HOWEVER - It's not unusual for hr departments to get confused and "double correct" for flexible arrangements like this - I know of more than one case where the worker's leave was pro-rata'd as above but then was docked 1.25 Annual Leave days for each day taken which resulted in actually only getting less than 5 weeks off rather than 6 (obviously not acceptable)

Calculating leave in Hours can make it easier as PP say but the result is the same if it's done right.

If you are working full time hours across 4 days per week and full time workers get 6 weeks annual leave (30 days if working 5 days a week) then it is quite correct for your annual leave to be 24 days rather than 30 because if you had 30 you would be able to take 7.5 weeks off. So long as you are deducted yoir annual leave as 4 days taken if you take 4 days off this is fine

That’s not true - a full time worker on compressed hours gets the full time holiday entitlement, not pro rata as you seem to be suggesting. The difference is that an annual leave day is taken in hours and as a compressed day is longer than a normal day it deducts more hours. For example, I get 33 days a/l (full time holiday allowance) and 8 public holidays (f/t allowance) but each time I record a/l or p/h day I have to use 8.22 hours which is the length of my compressed day instead of the standard day which is 7.4 hours.

@SirChenjins if talking in days, the @CrabSignalArmy is correct. Each week of annual leave that @SocksTalk would consist of 4.5 days leave for the OP, because her working week is 4.5 days. She can't be given 30 days leave because that would equate to 6.66 weeks leave rather than 6 weeks. Which is why annual leave is better calculated in hours.

But compressed hours annual leave is never calculated in days, it's always in hours.

That's incorrect. It's certainly easier if calculated in hours but may workplaces, including my own only calculate holiday in days.... no matter what your working pattern is.

If they're working only in days then your workplace must have calculations for a standard day and a compressed day and then allocates a/l and p/h using hours and then converting to days. How does that work with the different variations of compressed working, part time workers or shift workers who compress though? Seems a very complicated way of working - it's far better and easier to work out your total leave in hours and deduct your compressed day that way.