Advice needed - compressed hours and holidays

[RaspberriesAllRound]

Hello

I hope this hasn't been done to death already. I had a quick search and couldn't see anything obvious.

Does anyone know what happens to your bank holiday entitlement if you work compressed hours?

I will be working full time but compressing my hours into 4 days next year. Our HR team have informed me I will only be entitled to take 80% of the bank holidays as a result of compressing my hours and the remaining days will need to be taken from my annual leave.

Is this right? It's hard to get my head around why my bank holiday entitlement should reduce when I am working full time not part time.

Any ideas anyone?

Yes that is correct.

If you work 10 hours not 8 hours per day then you still get your BH entitlement (say 8 BH days at 8 hours = total 64 hours).

But as you work 10 hours per day each BH off costs you 10 hours (as that is what you are paid for) so you get 6.4 bank holidays.

In essence you are getting the same amount of bank holiday (in hours) just as you've compressed your hours you get fewer days. Same with holidays.

Thanks for the feedback seeyoukay.

OK, still trying to wrap tired brain around this. I can sort of understand it, but pro-rata'ing' the BH allocation down only really works in a fair way if you work an extra-long day on all of the BH's doesn't it?

If my non-working day falls on a BH (which it will from time to time) then I don't need to take leave and I won't be paid for the day. So how is it going to work. The BH won't have 'cost' me any hours.

So taking a day and a half leave away from me every year assuming that each BH 'costs' 10h instead of 8h seems quite unfair when some BH's won't have cost any hours at all - my full hour allocation will be worked in the remaining days of the week.

Really confused now

Ah, I see the confusion.

No, you should only need to use one of the BH days when the bank holiday falls on a working day. When it falls on a non-working day then, as you say, you wouldn't be working anyway.

Try not thinking of it as compressed hours, just a four day week (with each day being long hours). So you get 4/5th of bank holidays. If it falls on a working day, you take one of your 80% balance to cover it. If it falls on a non-working day, no need to use credit as you wouldn't be working anyway (a bit like if it could fall at the weekend).

Great, that makes sense. Thanks RibenaBerry!