Holiday Allowance Part-time

[Helskitty]

I'm getting confused with my part time allocation for holiday allowance. I appear to have worked it out differently to our HR person and I just wanted to check if they've got it right if anyone knows about holiday allowance rules.

They worked it out as:

Full time holiday allowance:33 days including Bank Holidays
+6 days allowance for working 12 years at company.
=39 days

Part-time (3 days): (39/5) × 3=23.4
-7 bank holiday days = 16.5 days

Full-time: I worked it out as 25 days (not including bank holidays= 15 days part-time (3 days per week)

• 3.5 days (pro rata for 6 days loyalty) =18.5 days

I feel like I'm being penalised for working part-time and my working days falling over bank-holidays.

I might be wrong as it's making my head hurt a little but with the cost of childcare the extra days make all the difference.

I would work it out the same as your HR team I'm afraid, if you got 15 plus bank holidays you'd be getting more days than a full-time worker. The only difference is I would add loyalty days on afterwards and no pro rata those.

If you work on BH, then it does come off your allowance otherwise you'd be benefitting from them in a way FT people don't.

Sorry, you're wrong. The bank holidays have to be included, otherwise you may be getting more than your entitlement.

Can you change your working pattern so that fewer of your working days land on a bank holiday? E.g. don't work Mondays?

The issue is they pro rata the BH allowance but then remove a full day so it's not the same as a FT employee. I'd discuss this with them.

Although I'm not sure PT employees are automatically entitled to pro rata BH - is it at employer discretion?

No, it isn't at the employer's discretion. PT staff must have the same entitlement pro rata'd.

Assuming that the OP works 3 full days, rather than 0.6FTE across 5 days, then they have to deduct full days for the bank holidays on which she would usually be due to work, because she isn't working those hours.

Depends what days you work. If you work Mondays then you get shafted by bank holiday Mondays as you get BH prorata so have to use some holiday days to cover them all.

⅗ of 39 is 23.4 days
Minus any bank holiday you are due to work and what you're left with are your holidays to choose yourself

What happens regarding the BH varies from employer to employer. When I was working a pattern with Mondays off I was not able to take/count them in my general allocation, and effectively 'threw away' all BH mondays.
So your calculations and divisions should only include the actual leave days: 33 MNINUS 7, plus 6. And the add the 7 BH back in later but they can't be moved and must be taken on the days they fall. That's how it works for me.

I would work it as
33-8 = 25 days annual leave
25/5x3= 15 days
BH allowance= 8/5×3= 4.8 days
6days = 6/5×3= 3.6

Total allowance = 15+4.8+3.6= 23.4

You then need to take annual leave on the bank holidays that fall on your working days the remaining days are yours to book as you like. So unfortunately if more than 4 bank Holidays in the year are on your working days you need to use your annual leave entitlement.

So, if the PT employee usually works Mondays, and 7 out of the 8 bank holidays fall on a Monday, she is getting 7 days paid bank holiday in total.

Assuming that Monday's working hours are the same for OP and a full time member of staff - let's say, 8 hours - that would mean that the OP gets 7 × 8 hours of bank holiday time in a year, while a FT worker gets 8 x 8 hours.

So OP would be getting 56 hours of bank holiday time or 87.5% of the full time equivalent (64 hours), but according to get contract, she should only be entitled to 60% of the full time entitlement.

The best solution is to avoid working on Mondays if possible, but otherwise, you just need to suck it up.

You can check it here www.gov.uk/calculate-your-holiday-entitlement

If I have understood your post correctly, that is not right.

You should not have just "lost" the bank holiday entitlement when you didn't work on Mondays. You have a legal right to the same entitlement as full time colleagues but on a pro rata basis. They can't just say, too bad, you missed out.

Provided 7 bank holidays fall on your normal working days, your employer is correct. You are not being penalised because most bank holidays fall on your working days. You are, overall, getting the same amount of holiday as you would if your working pattern was different and fewer bank holidays fell on your normal working days.

Your fundamental mistake is that you are treating bank holidays as different. They aren't. They are just part of your holiday entitlement for this calculation.

You'll need to check your company policy. I can't quite follow your calculation but I also work 3 days and get my bank holidays pro-rata (so 60% of them) and added on to my leave. If they fall on a day I work I have to take that day as leave (I don't work Monday partly for this reason).
However my friend works for a different company and they work out how many bank holidays fall on her working days and add that to her allowance.

This is how my company does it. Everything is pro rated - my basic annual leave allowance, any extra “loyalty” working days I’ve earned, and the Uk bank holidays. If I worked 0.6, I’d get 0.6 of all of those numbers, and I’d have to book the bank holidays off as bank hol leave. If I didn’t have enough bank hol leave for all the bank hol days I wanted to take off (because of the days I worked) I’d use annual leave for them.

But we don’t have to take bank holidays off where I work. Most people do, but the office is open if you want to work them. I can see there might be different rules if the place was closed on those days.

It isn't a question of company policy. It's about legal entitlement.

PT workers have the same right to paid time off at FT workers. No more, no less. Companies may take slightly different approaches to calculating this entitlement, but the basic principle is dictated by the law.

My employer is the same as @Talipesmum above. I worked the last august bank holiday as the office is still open and it suited me better for childcare etc.

We do have two company designated holidays that everyone must take off though - Christmas Day and New Years Day.

a holiday allowance of 39 days including bank holidays for a full timer is simply worked out for a part timer by dividing by 5 then multiplying by the number of days you are working.

So you will get 39/5 * 3 which equals 23.4 days. They can't round down so that becomes 23.5 days or 24 days if they are being generous.

I think your Maths is working out differently is because you're not pro-rating your bank holiday allowance in your calculation. You're only entitled to 60% of the bank holidays paid - 4.8 days - but by taking 7 days off on bank holiday's, the difference (almost 2 days) needs to come from the rest of your allowance. That's where the 2 day discrepancy comes from.

Thank you all, I appreciate your help. Yes bank holidays are part of the entitlement although the office isn't open on Bank Holidays, it still seems company policy.

I think I'm going to have to change my working days not to include Monday to gain an extra 2 weeks of annual leave basically and still have the bank holiday off.

You will still have exactly the same number of days off - 23.5 days over the year. The only difference is that you will be able to take them when you want instead of having to take them on bank holidays. With bank holidays falling on your non-working days, you won't be getting a day off for bank holidays.

@Anothernamechangeplease Thanks for that, maybe I misunderstood how it works / worked (I no longer work Mondays) but I was not really missing out, everyone got xx days PLUS BH, and I got pro-rata xx days plus BH (no pro rata there), they don't come out of my/our holiday allowance. I am just accepting the figures HR give me these days ;-) and have stopped trying to understand. We also all have to take the 4 days shut-down over Christmas out of our allowance (which I think is higher than legal minimum), if I'm lucky it includes my non-workig day and I only have to take three...

OP, working out part time holiday allowance is easier if you do it in hours and not days. This allows you to pro-rate bank holidays more accurately as you may not work Mondays and Fridays and the shift. Christmas ones.

So if your full time allocation is 33 days, including bank holidays plus 6, assuming a 7.5 hours working day, you are entitled to 292.5 hours annual leave.

Working 3/5 of this means you are entitled to a total 175.5 hours of annual leave. However, if you are due to work on bank holidays you would need to use hours to cover these.

Sorry, that should say "and the changing Christmas/New Year bank holiday days".

You dont need to do it in hours if you work the same number of hours over the same number of days per week. If you work 3 days you get ⅗ of the holidays, if you work 4 days you get ⅘ of the holidays.

That dose not work if you work on a Monday when most bank holidays fall. If you only get 3/5 bank holiday entitlement then that's (based on 7 days as the OP states) 4.2 days for bank holidays and 6 bank holidays fall on a Monday this year. The OP would therefore have to use annual leave to cover the short fall. If the OP works 3 days then each nam holiday should be 3/5 of a day.