AIBU? - Annual leave

[MrsR31]

I'd like some opinions please, especially from those of you who might have HR experience.

Background is, I work part time, used to be mon to wed. Employer asked if I would take on new role last year and work mon/tue & fri. Agreed and rejigged childcare. Today I got new holiday sheet for the next year, I get pro rats share of 25 days & public hols. However, this time I will only get 7 public holidays despite working days falling on all 12. Meaning that whilst office is closed, I have to supplement p/h with 5 days annual leave (one & a half weeks). Leaving me with ten days for the year.

AIBU to expect full p/h allocation? Feel that it's unfair, especially as I changed my days to suit business needs and wouldn't have agreed if I had been made aware of the implications. I never have spare annual leave due to needing days for filling childcare gaps. Solutions offered were to work back extra 5 days -not feasible, work PT for a reason, or change days so that not working mon & Friday. But that's a major pain in the arse too as I need to rejig childcare again and I was watching my niece on my day off, so also going to mess up my sisters childcare.

[treaclesoda]

Not need Ireland! Northern Ireland

[apotheke]

Scottish bank holidays vary by local authority which is why you are getting inconsistent information from posters who believe their area is true for all of Scotland.

Sounds like it's fair from an HR point of view but you could ask for flexibility in how it is enforced give you switched to help them.

[dazzlingdeborahrose]

Your employer is correct. You get the same number of holidays as full time staff pro-rated to your percentage working time. I work a 60% contract and get 60% of the holiday allowance including bank holidays. Because I don't work on Mondays I get 60% of the bank holidays rolled into my annual leave. The year of the queens jubilee I got 60% of the extra holiday and had to 'pay' for the other 40% out of my holiday allowance. So, ironically the year we all got an extra day off, I had a smaller annual leave allowance. Just the way the cookie crumbled that year.
It's frustrating and something that you and your employer should have discussed as it is a major consequence of a part time staff member changing their working pattern.

[Papafran]

But I can assure you that your employer is correct. I'm a HR manager..If that counts for anything

Yes, I think I have understood it now. So normal entitlement is 25+12=37 and OP gets 22 days (10 days holiday and 12 bank holidays). Yes, ignore my ACAS advice, OP. You are getting as much time off proportionately as someone who works full time. I guess the irritating thing is that you can't choose when all your holiday is taken, but you still have over 3 weeks of leave.

[EineKleine]

What are the 12 bank hols? I thought it was 8.

It is a pain, but fairer than giving you loads more days off now than you had working your old pattern. This way everyone gets the same time off but PTers working Mondays get slightly more constrained time off than FTers, who are in turn slightly more constrained than PTers who don't work Mondays. In another year Christmas will fall differently and it'll be easier for you.

If your sister works PT too you may be able to split the difference with her - each use 0.5 day from your annual leave/public hol allowance to cover niece childcare when you need to work in lieu of bank hol. It shouldn't be loads.

[Gillian1980]

Wow, I'm just realising how lucky I've been as I genuinely didn't know places pro rata bank hols for p/t staff.

I work mon-wed and get 18 days annual leave as well as all bank holidays. It wouldn't have occurred to me to have asked about pro rata bank hols as I never knew that was a thing!

If that's how they do it where you work then I guess there's not much you can do but I'd tell them that they need to be explicit in the changes when asking people to change working days.

[EineKleine]

Or get DPs to cover niece days, of course.

[bruffin]

I work the same days and it does feel that you lose out on holidays to bank holidays.
Last year i took a 3 week holiday and only had 1 day left that i had choice of. If i worked full time or different days i would have 5 days i could chose. I get 17 days prorata and 7 had to go towards bank holidays which left me with only 3 weeks and 1 day.
Unfortunately law is not on our side.
I used to get 12 days bank holidays at a previous job , which included closure between christmas and new year

[unfortunateevents]

Gillian1980 it's not a "thing" or how it is done is some companies, it is official government policy on working out annual leave entitlement. If you get your A/L pro-rata plus the full amount of BH, then your company either doesn't know what they are doing or are being incredibly generous. I would keep pretty quiet about it though or the full-timers are going to get a bit hacked off!

[Happyfeet1972]

papa yeah she should be getting 60% of 25 a/l and 60% of 12 days public....That's the bottom line and how I'd do a quick check that it's fair. But how those days are then accounted for can become complicated (as we've seen here) depending on people's working patterns. But it is fair even if at face value it seems not...I used to work with someone who didn't work a Monday and therefore would accrue their bank holiday allowance and think they were benefitting...But they weren't really as they'd still worked their full week that week whereas the rest of us had had a day off.

It does cause a lot of confusion though. I speak from bitter experience in the civil service.

[brasty]

Gillian1980 I would assume it is a mistake. Don't go shouting about it or it may change

[MrsR31]

Because of the bank hols in our area, there are 4 Fridays this year. I'm going to discuss options with my work to try and resolve this, but yes, I did assume that if it fell on your normal working day, then you got it as standard.

[Gillian1980]

They know what they're doing, they're a huge company with large HR dept and they are generous in general. Almost everyone is p/t in my office though.

I've never had my bank hols pro rata anywhere I've worked, hence my surprise. I must have been exceptionally lucky!

[MovingOnUpMovingOnOut]

Actually you can give part timers proportionately more annual leave than full timers. What you can't do is give part timers less proportionately than full timers.

Only part timers have protection in law because historically they were shafted

[RB68]

Bank Holidays are set by the government but form a part of your statutory holidays entitlement - work part time they are pro-rated same as your holiday is. I think you just lucked out previously by having someone that didn't understand how to calc pt holidays

[MovingOnUpMovingOnOut]

The poster who had to take the "bonus" bank holiday out of her normal holiday entitlement has cause to complain. The full timers got it as a bonus but because she was part time she did not get it. She should have got a proportion of the extra day added to her annual entitlement (rounded up to half day where necessary).

That's a breach of the Part-Timer Workers Regs cited above.

[dingdongthewitchisdead1]

Yes in my work, part timers get a pro rata allocation of bank holidays also. Say there are 8 in the year and their full time equivalent is 0.5, then they get 4 bank holidays. Any bh's over and able that, they will need to use annual leave if they want the day off.
You earn your bh entitlement so if you work less hours, you earn less entitlement

[BlueBlueSkies]

I used to have a job share working for me and they got the 28 days pro rata. It did work out unfair for the person who did the first 3 days of the week, as she got the same holiday as the person who did the last 3, they both worked Wednesday. She had to use her holiday for the Monday bank holidays, whilst the jobsharer got to use more of the days for her own use. This was with a big company and I could do nothing about it.

I now run my own business, my part timer gets her 25 days pro rata for 4 days and I pay her for any bank holiday that would be a normal working day. As she does not work on a Tuesday she gets a nice long weekend when there is a Monday bank holiday without eating into her holiday. I have not worked out how this compares to pro rata the bank holidays.

I think each employer can choose what to do.

[jamdonut]

Weird.
When I worked for the NHS, (clerical) I worked Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 15 hours a week. I always got the bank holidays paid, because they fell on my normal working days, and Outpatients was always closed on Bank Holidays. If I didn't work on Mondays, I wouldn't have got paid for it, as it was not a working day anyway.
Maybe the rules have changed since then, though.

[purplecollar]

When I was in a 50% job share, I worked Wed to Fri and had days added to my holiday to make up for the bank holidays (mostly Mondays). My job sharer who worked Mon to Wed had to give days back (i.e. deduct some from her A/L). Fair enough I'd say. It's one job, we shouldn't both have all the BH paid.

[EineKleine]

They know what they're doing, they're a huge company with large HR dept and they are generous in general. Almost everyone is p/t in my office though.

I've never had my bank hols pro rata anywhere I've worked, hence my surprise. I must have been exceptionally lucky!

Maybe, but anyone who works for your employer Wed-Fri is exceptionally unlucky.
You see it in nursery fees structures too. Ours used to charge a daily rate including bank hols, because they still had to pay the staff on bank hols. People who used them on Mondays had 3ish fewer days' usable childcare for the same annual cost. We were "winners" in the system because we didn't use them Mondays, but I still think it was an unfair way to do it.

[BackforGood]

Teaching is slightly different though Euphemia as all Bank Holidays are none working days.
I did work with 2 TAs once who did a job share and agreed to split each week 50:50 - so if you stared back after a holiday on a Wednesday, they each worked a day and a half, etc. - if worked for them as their childcare was their mother / mother in law both of whom could be flexible. When I did a jobshare we just stuck to our 'set' days and if it worked out one year I'd worked an extra day, so be it - I reckoned it would all come out in the wash, and it wouldn't have been possible for me to get childcare on non-working days.

Outside of schools though, pro-rata kicks in, so, if you can, plan your working days to avoid Mondays.

[treaclesoda]

Teaching is slightly different though Euphemia as all Bank Holidays are none working days

Not in all of the UK. We've got a couple of bank holidays each year where my kids are always at school whilst I have the day off. I always feel sorry for the teachers.