To think this holiday allowance is unfair?

[QueenOfThorns]

Sorry, I know this should probably be in the Work section, but I needed somewhere with more traffic so I can make a decision quickly.

I have recently accepted an offer of employment from a company who I really like the look of - many former colleagues work there and seem to like it. They have also been really flexible and agreed to let me work part time hours, but spread over 5 days, so 6 hours per day.

Today I received the usual paperwork to sign, including my contract of employment. It all seems as expected, except that it specifies that my holiday entitlement is 25 days (including public holidays), on a pro rata basis, with a full-time employee getting 33 days. This doesn't seem fair to me, after all, it would take me exactly the same number of holiday days to take a week off as a full-time employee, so why should I get fewer? (I had previously negotiated a similar working pattern with my current employer, changing from 4 full days to 5 shorter ones, and they were going to increase my holiday allowance to that of a full-time employee, which suggests that I'm not being totally unreasonable to think this would be fair!)

Does anyone have a working pattern like this and can you tell me whether you get the full holiday entitlement? Or is there anyone out there who works in HR who knows what would be standard practice?

I'm hoping that they just haven't thought this through, otherwise it feels a bit like they're trying to take the piss. And I'm not sure that I want to work for them if they are! Either way, I think it's a deal breaker for me unless they change this - I'd be sad to walk away, but I'm prepared to do it!

What do you think?

I get 6 days a year of my own to pick and i work 3 days (27 hours a week)

I work the same hours as you OP and my annual leave days have not changed from when I was full time as I am still in for the full working week. It just means when it says I have 25 days leave it means 25 days at 5 hours a day as opposed to my full time colleagues who would have 25 days at 7.5 hour days.

It doesn't sound right to me?

Calculate in hours

I work 5h Monday to Friday (i.e.25h in total) and I have as per contract 25 days annual leave. This is on the basis that I am contracted to work 5 days (each 5 hours).

my previous work (were I was p/t too had my leave calculated in hours, not days)

I think this could be right. You will book 0.8 days holiday (or whatever it is) each day in order to take a week off.

You're right cwg. The numbers don't add up. If they've done what I think it should be 26.5 days, assuming ft is 7.5 hours

Britt - yes BHs are important when people work less than 5 days per week.

It depends whether you work for a business that is open on BHs or not, because as most BHs are on Mondays, someone working Monday to Weds would be affected differently to someone working Weds to Friday, so needs to be accounted for in the hours per year calc - everyone still needs the equivalent of 5.6 weeks off each year.

The one downside, that can't be overcome is that if you work for a business that closes on Bank Holidays, you will have less choice about which days leave you take, because you will be forced to use some of your leave for BHs. But of course, plenty of workplaces have fixed holidays (schools, some factories) or have a set rota so not everyone gets choice about when they take holidays anyway.

missadasmith
I work 5h Monday to Friday (i.e.25h in total) and I have as per contract 25 days annual leave. This is on the basis that I am contracted to work 5 days (each 5 hours).

Do you get the same number of days' holiday as full-time workers? Is the 25 days inclusive, or exclusive, of bank holidays? If the former, then you are not receiving the minimum statutory entitlement for somebody working 5 days a week (28 days, inclusive of bank holidays).

God there are so many uninformed and downright wrong people on this thread. Repeating the same rubbish over and over doesn't suddenly make it fact.

Read Newtssuitcase and BarbaraofSeville posts (and a few others) and ignore the rest.

It's very interesting to see how many people are struggling with this concept. I wonder how many part-timers are out there getting screwed over on their annual leave?

Brittbugs80
I get 6 days a year of my own to pick and i work 3 days (27 hours a week)

Your annual holiday entitlement is 16.8 days, which can include bank holidays and days set by the company.

For anybody who wants to check their holiday allowance is correct, the gov.uk webside has a holiday calculator:

www.gov.uk/calculate-your-holiday-entitlement

In my company (and the others I have worked at, in HR) you would be entitled to the same holiday entitlement as F/T staff, but obviously only get paid your pro-rated hours.

We would only pro-rata holidays when an employee works less than 5 days per week.

Its best done in hrs as your days are 6 hrs where a fters are 7 plus depending. so if you take a days leave it is 6 hrs worth whereas a full timers is 7

So if you only ever take full days and each of your days is the same hrs then your holiday entitlement should be equivalent to the ft days but each of yr ones is only worth 6 hrs

If you calculate in hrs this means you can work more flecibly ie diff hrs diff days but still know how much in hrs holiday is costing so e.g. if you work 3 hrs tuesday and 4 hrs wed and 5 hrs thursday which ever day you take off you deduct normal hrs ie 3 4 or 5 depending on which day

Depends whether that's 6-hour days or 8-hour days. Your leave should be calculated in hours, I would just query it.

I work a 30 hour week, standard in my company is 37.5, so that's 80% of FT. I work a different number of hours each day which complicates things further.

I get 80% of whatever the FT leave allowance is including bank holidays (ie. holiday days + bank hols x 80%). If I take a bank holiday Monday off it costs me more than other people because I work 8.5 hours on a Monday but that's the price I pay for the flexibility.

If a pter works Wed to Fri, do they get an extra day off for a BH? Many years ago, I worked at a place which would be closed on a BH, and all the pters who didn't work on Mondays complained that they should get an extra day as they weren't getting BHs off.

This was in the early 70s, and lots of things were ill-defined or badly understood (I had to explain how to calculate pro-rata to the Personnel Manager, for instance).

Op are you saying as you only want the days made up in 6 hours days- say you took Monday-Friday off as holiday, ie. a week- would you then take it as 7 days holiday rather than 5 to account for the fact each of your 1 day leave is only worth 6 hours, so you need to take additional 1/3 day per each day taken to account for this? If this is right than I'd agree.

Eh Scattymere?

I'm amazed by the number of people struggling to understand what is such a simple concept.

than please do explain. Why is my post so wrong?

The OP is entitled to the same amount of days as a full-timer. She will be paid for 6 hours on each day. Scattymere you sound very bad at maths.

What your HR have done, is calculate 33 x 6 / 8, I think. So converted days to pt hours and then back to ft days. Why? Why on earth would you need to do that?

Someone in HR really has no clue what pro-rata means, let alone how to do it.

A full-timer would get their 8 hours pay. So for arguments sake the wage ius £10 per hour. The OP would get £60 and full-timer would get £80. She isn't asking for extra pay or holiday she isn't entitled to.

With regard to BH these should be proratad in as well so someone working 0,5 time gets 0.5 of all BH - in practice not very workable till you translate it to hrs so PT holidays should show hrs and include time for public holidays. If they normally work mondays but only 2 hrs then they have to save 2 hrs per BH they want as leave. If they only work Mondays its more tricky as although they work part time if they work 7 hrs on a monday they need to keep back 7 hrs for the day off. I find its usually best to work the hrs another day on BH week if you can't work the BH so swap a Monday for a THur or something

Lots of misinformation here.

Op youre definitely entitled to the 33 days at 6 hours per day.

Thanks, RB. But what if you don't work Mondays at all ever?