Part time holiday allowance advice please!

[polexiaaphrodesia]

Looking for a bit of advice from any HR/ legal people over what is probably a complete non issue but is bothering me a bit.

For background, I work 30 hours per week (81.1% FTE) for a large US corporate. My holiday allowance is given in hours including Bank Holidays. I am allowed to book holiday in our system in either blocks of 7.5 hours or 3.75 hours (so equivalent of 1 day or 0.5 days).

I have two separate issues at the moment. The first is that my annual holiday allowance in hours is not divisible by 7.5 or 3.75 hours so I end up with a balance that I can't take (e.g. 2.21 hours or something silly like that) which I am not reimbursed for so just lose. Its a small amount and in the grand scheme of things not worth a huge amount of money but I think this is unfair as a part time worker as this wouldn't be an issue if I was on a full time contract.

My second issue relates to holiday carry over. The official HR policy states that we can carry over up to 5 days per year (importantly doesn't specify "or part time equivalent"). In November, I specifically queried with HR how many days I was allowed to carry over as I felt the policy was ambiguous. I was told I could carry over 5 days so kept back 37.5 hours from my 2020 holiday allowance. Only 30 hours have now been carried over and HR's line is "5 days for you is the equivalent of 30 hours" and XYZ who you spoke to in November didn't really mean 5 days of 7.5 hours per day. I have gone back to them several times now stating that policy on holiday carry over doesn't mention pro rating for part time employees. I dont know whether to just suck it up or go back to them again and say that I disagree but they are now just repeating the same statement. Any advice (even just drop it!) gratefully received!

Can't advise on the legalities but surely if you can carry over holiday you don't lose the odd hours, you can carry them over until they add up to a full day or half day?

Hi @Puzzledtenant good point, thank you although I would always lose out as there would always be a balance left over as not divisible by 3.75 or 7.5. E.g. if I carried over 2.21 hours I could "use" those hours in the Q1 carry over period (we have to use hours from the previous year by end of March) but then I'd still be left with hours at the end of the year that I'd carry over to the following year etc.

What Puzzled said.
You carry over the 2.21 hours, and then take a 1/2 day at the start of the next holiday year, using up 3.75 of the 4.42 from both years. If you want, you can keep a record of the odd bits and add them up if you are there long enough.

I think (as a person who works PT myself) that everyone would assume the carry over is pro rata though. I don't think they are being unreasonable there. I know when this year they said we could carry over up to 10 days due to not being able to take all our leave in the Summer (we can't normally carry over), I knew that meant 6 days for me, 4 days for my colleague, 8 days for my other colleague etc. I think that is expected, even if not spelt out every time leave is mentioned.

A part time employee should never be given lesser employment rights than a full timer. Your Holliday entitlement means you can’t take it in the chunks they stipulate so you are being unfairly discriminated by means of being PT.

I think you should accept the pro rata argument on carry over. Your pay and holiday allowance are all pro rata, so should be the carry over.

Sorry for the spelling mistakes. I’m on my phone.

Thank you @BackforGood and @AnxiousSM I appreciate your responses. I think I am annoyed mainly at the carry over because I specifically queried it with them (all other parts of the policy say "or part time equivalent" but not the carry over portion of the policy) and was told 5 days. If they had said 4 days then I'd have used the holiday up so I was only carrying over 30 hours or if they had said in the policy "the equivalent of one working week" then that would also have been clear. Just annoyed at myself really

Are you working 5 'short' days a week, or working 'full' days but fewer than 5 days in one week?

If short days, do you have to use 7.5 hours of your annual leave to book one day off?

If the system only lets you book whole or half days, they should round up part hours to the nearest half day (or at least that's what my previous employers have done).

Hi @Plumpciousness (love the name!) I work 4 days per week 7.5 hours per day. Definitely agree that they should be rounding the hours up to the nearest half day...