Need to calculate annual leave entitlement for shift workers & confused!

[Thisisme2024]

Hi, I need to calculate annual leave for shift workers from 1st January 2026. All shifts will be 9.5 hours and the staff will work 4 days on and 4 days off. I've found something on Google:

Make calculations on the basis that shift workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of their average working week, restricted to 28 days of shifts. Therefore, a shift worker's full statutory annual leave entitlement is the lower of:
a) 5.6 weeks x average shifts per week, or
b) 28 days' worth of shifts (TBH I'm not sure I understand this bit!)

For 2026

Shift 1 will work 4 days on and 4 days off from Thursday 1st January which equates to 184 shifts and they will work on 5 of the 8 bank holidays

Shift 2 will work 4 days on and 4 days off from Monday 5th January which equates to 181 shifts worked and they will work on 3 of the 8 bank holidays

To add a bit more to the mix, employees are entitled to either 25, 26, 27 or 28 days' annual leave from 1st January to 31st December.

Ideally I'd like to create an excel spreadsheet where I just plug in all of the numbers but I'm not sure where to start!

Has anyone had experience of working out the above?

Any help would be VERY much appreciated, thanks in advance!

It's actually quite unusual these days for contracts to state holidays plus bank holidays. Most state including. We give 31 days leave which includes bank holidays. That means if they suddenly announce extra bank holidays such as the jubilee was, nothing changes.

Hi, does anyone see an issue with my logic below?

They will be working bank holidays so I thought we could calculate the below (not sure if this is too simplistic):

Shift 1 will work 5 of the 8 bank holidays (so add 1 day to their entitlement to compensate)

Shift 2 will work 3 of the 8 bank holidays (so minus 1 day from their entitlement to compensate)

Thanks 😀

What’s their FTE going to be though? You can’t change people’s shift patterns if that means reducing their total annual hours and salary.

As others have said, do the whole thing in annual hours - how many hours per year does everyone work, how many do full timers work, pro rata everything from that.

Do you not have anyone, even a retained consultancy, to do this sort of HR work? I’m not sure any company should be relying on MN to do their HR function.

@ titchy
Many thanks for your response. I agree, I'm not relying on MN for the calculation, it's more that I wanted to get my head around this before our outsourced HR advice company call me to go through this :)

Then do the whole lot in hours. How many hour per year does a full timer work. That’s your baseline.

Right, if they work bank holidays you need to know the wording of the contract before you can go any further. It shoudl say one of two things

x days holiday entitlement including bank holidays OR
x days holiday entitlement plus bank holidays.

Hopefully it says the first which will make your life easier if so

If it does then ignore bank holidays completely just work out the entitlement in hours as myself and countless other have said. Shift patterns such as you describe are incredibly complicated to work out in the way gov.uk states and the first time you have a worker query it they will tie you up in knots.

I've just had a call with our outsourced HR support and they are saying to work the AL out in days. The only time we've ever worked out AL in hours is for people who work a different number of hours on different days. I don't doubt you all when you say that we'd be best working it out in hours, but can someone tell me why as surely a day's leave = a shift? What am I missing here?

The contracts state annual leave plus bank holidays, again why is that an issue as they still get the same number of days?

Thanks 😀

It is an issue legally as it affects how bank holidays are worked out. If the contract says including bank holidays it is a much simpler way of pro rataring bank holidays for part time or shift workers. The plus bank holidays wording means that someone who regularly works on Mondays is entitled to more bank holidays than someone who does not and a part time worker cannot be treated less favourably than a full time worker.

I understand what HR are saying but do they realise that the people won't be working the same number of days each week?

@Comefromaway · Today 10:27

I understand what HR are saying but do they realise that the people won't be working the same number of days each week?

Yes, from what I can gather they have used the gov.uk calculation....

Let them work it out then.