Part time holiday

[heyjoeyitsestelle]

I am going back to work after mat leave part time. My hours are reducing from 35 to 28.

I am working 4 days a week-
Day 1 - 5 hours
Day 2 - 8 hours
Day 3 - 7.5 hours
Day 4 - 7.5 hours

I queried how my holidays work and whether they would be split into hours. Hr advised they wouldn't be and would be full days or half days.

Now I'm confused- because they basically said if I take Monday off I lose a days holiday, the same as if I took Tuesday off. However the difference in work time is 3 hours. Is this right?

I feel like I would be short changed if I booked any Monday off as annual leave.
Similarly- if all my annual leave was taken on a Tuesday- it would be more than my actual allowance?

Am i missing something here?

I work in HR and this is just completely wrong! The only time you would keep your entitlement in days would be if you worked the same number of hours each day then you might get i.e. 28 days leave but they would be 28 of 'your days' e.g six hours a day. But if you do a variable pattern as you say then that doesn't work as if you book more leave on your short days then you lose out but if you book them all on your longer days you gain. It is in everyone's interest to be precise.

Have they given you your entitlement in days but perhaps worked it out in hours ?
If you take a days leave on a five hour day you could request 2 hours time in lieu?

The one way this could work would be if the system can cope with varying hundredth fractions of days.

That way your annual leave equivalent can be calculated in days where a day equals 7 hours.

When you take a 5hr Monday off, that is reckoned as 0.71days. An 8hr Tuesday would be 1.14 days of leave. The 7.5hr days are 1.07 days.

So if you take a whole week off it costs you 0.71+1.14+1.07+1.07 days of leave which is 4days. That works fine.

We get a certain number of days that is broken down into prorata for part timers. Then everyone book it in hours.

I work 6.5hrs a day, full timers work 7.5hrs. I would not be happy having 7.5hrs deducted because everyone who works full time does.

@purplemunkey
It would balance out over the year but only if I booked the same amount of each day off.
If for example book 4 random Monday's off - I would lose 8 hours of holiday- so more than their '1 day'

@jelly79
I've spoken to first level hr over then phone and then the second person who I was speaking to yesterday administers the holiday system. So waiting for it to be escalated now.

@YobaOljazUwaque
I asked this- as it comes across that their issue is their system can't breakdown into hours (!) but got the same response. They system just removes 1 day no matter what day I book off.

Thanks for all the responses. It's annoying me more as I think what I'm saying is fairly obvious and for them so say 'well sorry but that's how it's done for everyone' has really pissed me off.

OK here's another alternate solution - how to ensure your working hours are fair in situations where you

a full time worker works 35 hours, you work 28 hours. so 1 "day" of work is normally 7 hours but yours are uneven.

If you take a whole week off, it is fine because the total number of hours in a week for you is 28.

If you take one, two or three days off in a week, agree with HR and your manager that the hours you will work on the other days will be 21, 14 or 7 respectively regardless of which weekdays are affected. So if you take a Monday off (including if it's a bank holiday Monday) and so are deducted a full day, you only owe 21 hours of work Tue-Thur instead of the normal 23 hours so can go home a bit early those other days. If you take a Tuesday off you also owe 21 hours over the other 3 days but your normal pattern would only give 20 so you need to work an extra hour on one of the other days.

That way they don't have to get to grips with a new and complicated hourly leave booking system for the sake of a single employee, and you get treated fairly.

OP did you resolve this...?

@jelly79
Not yet no. HR have now not responded to my emails - you'd think I was working for a tiny company with no HR set up the way this is going.

I've contacted my union rep.
Also realised they have already taken extra holidays from me when I returned from leave. I had 3 weeks holiday before I came back in and they've taken 15 days instead of 12 days.