Annual leave allowance disagreement

[Dinodinosaur]

I work part time and up until now this has been full days. I received a pro rata allowance for annual leave and bank holidays and bank holidays needed to be booked from this allowance.

I am now moving to a mix of full and half days, with the number of hours worked overall per week remaining the same.

My employer has said I now get the same number of days off as a full time employee, but if the day I have off falls on one of my half days it will count as a full day off as they base annual leave on days not hours.

I will need to take time off more often on the half days to cover child care in school holidays. Therefore, I will lose out on holiday in comparison to now, even though my number of hours won't change.

Is this something they are able to do? I am going to challenge, I would just like advice on where I stand first if anyone has it. Thank you.

The pps working out the hours are really over complicating matters.

She is given a full time annual leave allowance. She works part time.

Therefore, if she takes a full day annual leave when she works a half day, it does not matter as she was over compensated for this, to take this into account, when she was given her full time entitlement.

I thought it was more relevant how many hours you do compared to a full time?

It normally is but as the op is working full and part time hours over a full week (5 days), her employer is giving her the full leave allowance and asking her to take 1 full day no matter what day if the week she takes off.

This is really strange I've never heard of this before. Part time position can still be full days sometimes but you're still classed as a part time worker cos you're not doing the full time hours

Yes, she is part time but her employer has given her a full time leave allowance because she works every day.

So 1 day annual leave for her is 1 full day whatever day she takes it.

Your annual leave entitlement should be calculated in hours, not days.

For example:

Ops full time co workers work 37.5 hours per week over 5 days and get 28 days annual leave and take bank holidays when they fall.

Op works 22.5 hours per week over 5 days and gets 28 days annual leave and takes bank holidays when they fall.

Op needs to take a full days annual leave whatever day of the week she takes off. If you allowed her to only take a half day (on the days she works 3.5 hours) then she would get far more leave than a full time worker.

I'm back to thinking it's not fair!

If OPs co workers work 35 hours a week and get 20 days leave that would be 140 hours in total. OP works 80% of their hours so should get 112 hours in total. If she took four full weeks off work throughout the year, she would get 112 hours leave. But if she took all 20 days leave on one of her full working days, then she would also have taken 140 hours leave, which would be unfair to her colleagues. And if she took all 20 days of her leave on one of her half days, she would only be getting 70 hours leave which would be unfair to her.

Can FT employees book half days off?

The problem occurs because the OP doesn't work her hours evenly throughout the week.

e.g. If standard holiday is 25 days that would give FT workers 50 half-days a year.
If OP takes all 25 days leave on her half-days she would only actually benefit by working 25 half-days less. If she took them on full-days she would get 50 half-days off.

In this example it would be more fair to count her leave in half-days, so 80% would be 40 half-days off, 2 to be taken for each full-day off and 1 when she normally works a half-day.

It should be done in hours if it’s a mix of full days and half days - easiest/fairest way. You should also be getting a pro rata amount (80%) of bank holidays in the pot, along with the holiday allowance.

So when she takes a day off, whatever day, she takes 1 day out of her entitlement. The full time entitlement takes account of the half days that she works but takes a full days leave for.

I used to think I was quite bright but I just can’t get my head around this (and I used to sort out our departmental annual leave)
Surely giving the OP the same number of days off as full time staff only works if she then takes her leave in the same configuration as she works?
How does it work if she decides to take annual leave only on the days she works (for example) 8 hours, as opposed to only on the days she works 4 hours?

If I take a day's leave, it's 20% of my FT work week. If the OP takes a day's leave, it's either 25% of her week, if it's one of the days she works FT, or 16% if it's on a half day. It could work in her favour if she only takes full days off, but works against her if taking only half days. Taking full weeks would balance out.

The most sensible resolution would be for the employer to get a decent HR system which calculates leave in hours, so OP gets leave pro-rataed. I suppose this isn't an option, at least not one the OP can control, so you're left with the coke cans, and it's far more wasteful to only ever drink a half can - and doesn't cater for those who can't drink a whole can in one go.

(I work FT, but I can still book a half day of leave - if I want to come in an hour or two late, or leave early, I just have to make the time up.)

I used to work on a flexi time basis (Local council) . If you wanted you could really take the piss with only booking off core hours and not full days. I think core hours were 10-12 and 2:30-4. So only 3:30 hours a day

Not when I worked flexi for a government agency. You could only book full or half days as flexi leave (or annual leave) and you couldn't take more than two flexible days in a month. There were also restrictions about how much flexi time you could carry over, but I forget the details.

Not that this is relevant to the OP.

And it’s much more of an incentive for staff if they can book leave in hours as they want it (obviously assuming that the needs of the business are met). I think if you can be flexible for staff then they are more prepared to be flexible back (well most of them).