Holiday - feels like I've lost some

[SciFiFan2015]

Hi there, wonder if you can help me raise this with work I work compressed hours so I do 24 hours over 3 days (3 x 8 hour days, 7 is standard for my company). We used to work out holiday pro rata on a day basis (with PH built in) my allowance was 24.15 days so I had 24 days on my sheet.

The whole company has moved to hourly calculations (which I understand is fairer) but I now only get 168 hours which is only 21 days!

I feel like I've lost 3 days of annual leave - whereas my company tells me that I shouldn't complain because I've obviously had too many before.

Is it even worth asking a few questions?

So is the full time standard 35 days (seems a lot, did it include BHs?)

In which case it sounds to me as if you were getting too many before.

It reads as if for every day (8hrs for you) you took off, you effectively only used 7hrs of leave the way they calculated it before?

Yes sorry its sounds as if you were taking too much before - as pp says it sounds as if you were only being "charged" 7 hours every time you took 8 hours off.

Yes full time standard is 35 days which includes bank holidays. My allowance was worked out for me by HR I always checked it. 35 x 0.69 FTE = 24.15

Drat. Leaves a rotten feeling that I've "lost" 3 days of leave.

The statutory allowance for compressed week of 3 days, 24 hours a week is 134 hours and 24 minutes. www.gov.uk/calculate-your-holiday-entitlement/y

I presume a typical employee works 35 hours over 5 days. How many weeks/days holiday is a full time member of staff supposed to get? I wonder if they’re actually calculating your hours as less than 8 per day due to taking off time for an unpaid lunch break (think you have to have a break of at least 20 minutes if working more than 6 hours)

There isn't enough information here to be sure which calculation is right but the 24.15 days figure seems odd. It suggests that employees working 5 days per week get 40.25 days holiday per year. I would expect that to be a whole number of days. The 168 hours figure suggests full time employees get 35 days per year. That sounds like a reasonable number so I suspect you may have been getting too much holiday before. It is, of course, possible that both numbers are wrong!

Yes, from that you've been taking too much for however long - don't look at it as losing three days, just hope they don't want you to repay the ones you had in error!

Another way to understand it is that you were working 3.5 days compressed into 3, so everytime you took a week off you took 3.5 days off, but only counted it as 3.

The issue is the 35 days are 7 hour days so the initial calculation was wrong - it would’ve been 24.15 7 hour days.

The correct calc would’ve been

35 days x 7 hrs = 245 hrs (for FTE 1.0)

245 x 0.69 (your FTE) = 169 hours

169/8 = 21.13 8 hr days.

You got too many before and the new calc is correct.

Sorry yes you've been "over paid" in leave and now it is actually correct.

Thanks all. Better not make a big deal of it then.

Ugh. Changes have been made to our flexi policy too. Without any consultation. I'm sure the flexi policy was part of our terms and conditions.

It may well have been part of your terms and conditions even if it was not formally so. If it was your employer cannot change it unilaterally.

That's helpful to know @prh47bridge thanks. I've got a great line manager and have talked over the flexi stuff. Thankfully she saw what I was getting at (and the penny has dropped for the rest of my team too!) so hopefully we'll find a solution. I'm not going to bother mentioning the annual leave at all. If the flex can be sorted out I can always flex my days in difficult situations. They keep going on about needs of the business but uniquely for what I do...if I'm not there then there is no business happening. NO one else does my job. I also have to fundraise my salary and ALL my on costs as well as pay certain fees. So I have a very different situation to all of my colleagues. My salary and on costs are covered to end March. Gulp. I'm "permanent" though so I don't know what will happen if I don't raise more salary costs...

They are correct and the mistake was that you were getting more leave than you were entitled to before - your entitlement was 24 x 7hr days (168 hours) but you were taking it as 24 x 8hr days (192 hours). You have "lost" 3 days in the same way that someone who finds a wallet containing £100 cash has "lost" £100 when it is reclaimed by its rightful owner

Next niggle! I work part time. 24 hours over three days. It used to be that I would swap days around (sometimes to suit me, more often to suit work with meetings etc). Now we've been told that part time staff can't do that as it's a sneaky way of getting extra days off and full time staff can't do that. (Ie could work Mon/Tue/Wed one week and Wed/Thu/Fri the following week giving loads of time free in between but not using any annual leave) incidentally I never used it the way I've described it as I have fixed childcare arrangements. So I've told my boss that if I can't do it very occasionally to suit me (for appointments etc) then I'm not doing it for business purposes anymore.
Again my work is generated only when I'm there. What do you think of this? Is my refusal to swap for work acceptable?

I think it is reasonable to say that flexibility works both ways, and I really can't see that the 'full time people can't do it' argument holds water.

When I worked part time I had an 'hours' agreement and I worked hours flexibly to suit both my employer & myself. At one point I wanted to start volunteering for something else 1 day a week and I checked work were happy first to lose the flexibility except for vital stuff.

Yep, I would definitely say it works both ways. Ask them to clarify that, should a meeting be scheduled for a day you don't work, they absolutely don't want you to attend. It sounds as if they're making changes, somewhat sneakily, to make part time working less pleasant. Not fun, I've been there.

Sounds a bit petty of them. It's not a 'sneaky way of getting extra days off', for a start. It's not sneaky because presumably work have to approve it if you want to swap days, and it's not extra time off either, it's just different time off

What does your contract say about varying hours? It's all very well saying "flexibility should work both ways", but if your contract says your employer can change your days for this type of thing it's not quite as simple as refusing.

I agree with you it wouldn't be unreasonable to say flexibility is a two way street and if they are going to be petty about it then they lose your goodwill.

A p-t worker moving mon-wed work to wed-Fri in order to get a Thursday-Tuesday block free is not gaining any extra annual leave - they are still working 3 days a week and the work is getting done. It is not the employers business to know or care what staff do with their time off so long as the work gets done reliably. However, if levels of staffing for cover are relevant such a move should have managerial approval to ensure that there will be sufficient staffing on the "normal" days and to provide the capacity for someone else to take annual leave on the says where there will be more staffing than usual.

Thanks all. Our work is odd. Generally speaking if we're not there no one else will pick up our work for us. I've got a unique situation anyway (see PPs) whereas my colleagues work in such a way that they can plan in advance for being off and let their clients know this. Lots of account management and 1:1 relationships. Only time this ever changes is when deadlines are looming but all deadlines are self-imposed anyway and planned a year in advance.