How to book hol with shift work?

[unknownn]

I have always worked a 9-5 Monday - Friday job. Booking holiday has always been simple, I can book way in advance and plan it around weekends to stretch the holiday further without using more holiday days. I have now started a new job which involves getting a new rota every two weeks. I've never experienced this before and have a maybe dummy question to ask.

Say I wanted to book a 1 week holiday for later in the year.. how do I know what days to book, as I don't know which days I will have been scheduled for that week? It feels unfair to me that I will be having to book a full 7 days of my holiday, when before I would only have to book 5 as I knew I wouldn't be working on a weekend.

This might sound silly but I honestly am wondering 😯 I can't get hold of my new boss atm and google isn't helping me sorry if this is confusing

When I worked in retail, we would state first day that we wanted to take and then total number of days. So for example, if I wanted to start my hols on a Monday, I would start from whatever date that was, and request 5 days holiday. So if my days off should have been Wed and Fri, I would use hols for Mon, Tue, Thur, Sat and Sun (5 days) which totals 1 week off.

Thank you ! That makes sense

So my rota was nhs. Working 37.5 hous a week. You would request the holiday. If approved you would use 5 days or 37.5 hours as holiday. Then id request the fri/sat off the week before my holiday. Plus Mon/Tues off on the week i came back. Worked out welk.