Pro-rata bank holidays- can't work this out!

[TheRedSalamander]

Can you help me with my thinking please!

I work 27 hours per week and so my bank holiday entitlement has been pro-rated accordingly to 43.2 hours. I'm comfortable with this principle and the calculation.

But all bank holidays in 2010-2011 fall on a Monday or Tuesday, and on these days I work 8.5 hours (5 hours on each of Wednesday or Thursday) which means that I would need to use 59.5 hours over the year to take the bank holidays off.

I've been advised by our HR peeps to swap my days round so that I work my shorter day on the Bank Holiday.

However, I have a feeling that this means I will be doing a proportionally longer working week than a full timer. But my maths is completely rubbish and I cant tell whether I should be asking them to recheck this advice or not! Also it means I'd only need to book 35 which doesn't seem right either if they're giving me more.

Should I suggest that I book 5.4 hours per bank holiday as this is 1/7th of the total 43.2? Or does this not make logical sense either?

My brain hurts from thinking about this.

Has someone had a similar situation and if so what was the outcome?

They've got it right.

If you work variable hours, the best way to calculate your holiday entitlement is in hours. A full timer would get 7 x 8 = 56. You get 77% of that (27 hours is 77% of full time), so 43.2 hours.

You then use the holiday entitlement when you need to take holiday. To 'cover' a bank holiday, you need to use 8.5 hours if that's what you work.

It's one of the quirks of working out bank holidays for part timers that you sometimes do well (someone who is four days a week and doesn't work Fridays doesn't need to use much of their bank holiday allowance to cover bank holidays, because so many are Mondays. They can therefore 'bank' some to use whenever they want) and sometimes do badly (the same part timer not working Mondays may actually have to eat into their annual holiday to eat into their annual holiday, depending on when Christmas and New year fall).

You are in the category of potentially losing out, because a disproportionate number of your working hours fall on a Monday. If you can swap around your working hours to avoid this, that's great. You wouldn't be losing out. By working longer hours later in the week, you would just be using less of your entitlement to cover the bank holidays, leaving some to take whenever you want.

ps - not all the bank holidays can ever fall Monday/Tuesday. Assuming Christmas is a Monday this year most would, but Good Friday never will .

HTH

Thanks RibenaBerry- thankfully swapping my days round isn't that tricky so I will be doing that.