Holiday calculations for reduced hours

[TPMB12]

This seems a stupidly simple thing to work out but I thought I'd consult people on here.

If you're working standard hours full time you've legally got 28 days of paid holiday. Out of that your terms of employment may include the 8 bank holidays leaving 20 days you can select the dates for. Assuming that's the base situation and it's simple to follow.

Now assume you're reducing your hours from 5 days to 2 days. In my logic you then get 2/5 of the 28 days = 11 full days. What about bank holidays? If you're not due to work on a bank holiday I guess it's irrelevant, it's neither a paid day or a paid holiday.

Is it that simple? If your working week includes a bank holiday you get paid but it comes out of your holiday entitlement.

Also,  if standard hours include a half day Friday it's considered a full day for holidays and holiday pay,  right? If you drop that day you drop just the value of those worked hours. If it's a bank holiday then it's holiday entitlement.

Btw holiday pay is only at rate based on what you get if it wasn't a holiday right?  Some at work reckon that half day fridays earns you your hourly rate for that half day hours. If it's a booked holiday some claim you get paid the hours for a full day,  this is what they believe is the case for bank holidays on half day Friday but also for booked holidays. To my mind that's wrong. You don't get more money that you'd get working a Friday for a holiday taken on a Friday.

Sorry,  but this has turned into a lot of questions. I've never been in the situation that this is relevant so I'm totally ignorant of the law and standard practices. I hope someone can clarify if you're situation is basically common sense in that you get holidays on a pro rata basis for reduced working time. You never get paid more for holidays of any kind than you'd get paid if it was a working day.

It's probably very simple answer but I'm looking to get it spelt out. Explain like I'm 5 years old (ELI5).

[rafletcher]

I'd be more inclined to say you got 2/5 of 20, or even 2/5 of 17, with 3 compulsory days (typically) at Christmas.

[FifeingEejit]

IIRC You only get bank holidays if they're part of your working week.
So if you're not employed to work Mondays you'll rarely get a bank holiday.

If you're only employed for a half day on a day that happens to be a holiday of some form then i think it's pro-rata with all the other holiday entitlement anyway.
Shouldn't be being paid for a full day if only employed to be half day on that day.

This is of course me trying to remember the nhs scotland employees handbook on something that doesn't affect me as I'm full time, so may be off a bit and the rulez may differ where you are.

[TPMB12]

The way I looked at it,  assuming 5 day week and full bank holiday entitlement,  is 28 days x 2/5 = 11 rounded down to full days. Out of this you knock off any bank holidays that fall on your standard 2 working days. In this case being mid week on Tuesday and Wednesday I think there's only new year's day = 10 days left. Xmas shutdown is almost 2 weeks and adds on further 4 days you can't select.

This leaves 6 days you could actually choose the dates of. Effectively it means 3 weeks because you're only working 2 days per week. This really only puts you into the same position as a full time worker,  namely you get 3 full weeks that you can choose for a holiday.

If you work it from 20 days you get 8 days holiday plus any bank holidays. I think that's illegal due to working week not falling on the common day for bank holidays.

That is 8 days less 2  weeks x 2 days per week gives you 4 selectable days plus shutdown for xmas and any bank holidays. A bit low.

It does seem that it's not something easily understood by people. There's a few ways people work it out which gives different results. There's often complications too.

[pdm]

When I went part time leave worked was worked out on an hourly basis.

If full time was, say 40 hours per week and I was doing part time at 30 hours per week it worked as follows:
28 days leave (assuming 8hrs per day) allocation works out at
28 days leave: 28*8*30/40 = 168 hours leave allocation.
10 bank holidays: 10*8*30/40 = 60 hours leave allocation; all bank holidays the fell on your work days were subtracted from your leave allocation for obvious reasons.
Total leave allocation: 228 hours

The calculation is then very simple: If I worked, say, Weds, Thu, Fri, 10 hours each day then a week's leave would cost 30 hours. If the Friday was a bank holiday, it would still cost 30 hours because I would have worked 10 hours that day. If the Monday was a bank holiday, it also still cost 30 hours. The "leave" from a bank holiday Monday would not have been worked so it is not subtracted - you do not "loose out" on your bank holiday.
Shift work calculations are marginally more complicated but follow the same principle.

This is very fair because it pays you back for the bank holidays you are unable to take as "leave".

[Greenbank]

Here's our company policy on the matter:-

Your bank holiday entitlement is calculated as follows:

XX days (number of public holidays) x XX hours (weekly hours) divided by 5 days = XX hours

Please record and manage this locally with your manager based on the "rules" below :

    For a public holiday that falls on your normal working day you should deduct the number of hours you would normally work from your local record. For example, if you work 5 hours on a day where a public holiday would normally fall, 5 hours should be deducted from your public holiday entitlement on your local record.

    If you do not have enough bank holiday entitlement, then the additional hours need to be deducted from your standard vacation entitlement.
    If a public holiday does not fall on your normal working day then you do not need to deduct any hours from your public holiday entitlement.

So for me, I work 33 hours out of a nominal 37 with my usual days being Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri (i.e. no Mondays).

My holiday allowance is 28 days (yes, not including bank holidays), but this is pulled down by 33/37 so that's 28 * 33/5 = 184.8h

There are then 8 bank holidays in the year, so I get a maximum of 8 * 33/5 = 52.8h towards covering those.

The important point to note, that may not be clear from the above quote, is that any unused holiday in my "public holiday entitlement" bucket is gone at the end of the year, I can't borrow from it or use it for normal vacation.

If I worked 50% hours and all of the public holidays fell on days I worked then I'd have to use my own personal holiday entitlement to cover half of them, annoying but fair.

If I worked 50% hours and none of the public holidays fell on days I worked then I simply don't have to work them, but can't use the unused "public holiday entitlement" bucket for time off at other times.

In reality, no-one at our place cares or looks too closely at it at all. If I did work a Monday (I used to before I switched from Friday off) then I just used to have all of the Bank Holidays off just as everyone else did, never a worry that my BH entitlement might not cover it.

I also buy 66 hours (2 weeks worth of my 33h week) holiday a year via salary sacrifice so my total is 250.8h/year. At 33h/week that's 7.6 weeks, plus every bank holiday off. *smug*

[Ham]

Here's our company policy on the matter:-
.......
I also buy 66 hours (2 weeks worth of my 33h week) holiday a year via salary sacrifice so my total is 250.8h/year. At 33h/week that's 7.6 weeks, plus every bank holiday off. *smug*

Just as a by the bye, had you requested 3 weeks from our esteemed employer (as you are able to) and notwithstanding that your manager will have approved, this year you will have found that the upstream management will say No!!!1! Not 3 weeks!!1! Even if you are paying for it, we've fired too many people already so stop slacking and get back to your oar"

[Greenbank]

(My mistake above, I get 30 days holiday a year not including bank holidays, plus my 66h I buy that's 264h/year = 8 weeks at 33h/week.)

I've bought 2 weeks for the last 8 years or so. When I got a new boss a few years ago who questioned it I just said it's easier than me putting in a request for unpaid parental leave (which they can defer with good reason but not deny) - which is what I would have done if it'd denied the 2 week request.

I'm only a few years away from my one year of 35 days holiday (not including bank holidays) but then I'll be back to just the 30days/year (plus 8 bank holidays).

[Adam]

In my old job, we had a number of part-timers.  We had a specialist firm providing advice on employment practices, contracts etc, and their advice was to add together normal holiday allowance plus bank holidays, then pro-rata the total based on days normal employed divided by 5.  If the employees normal working day fell on a bank holiday, then that came off their total days' allowance.

[Paul H]

The Bank Holidays are irrelevant if you're on the minimum.  I think at some point in the past the minimum entitlement was 20 days + Bank Holidays.  Now it's a straightforward 5.6 weeks. So 28 days if you work a 5 day week, 11.2 days if you work a 2 day week and so on.
Of course your contract may offer you more, or stipulate when you take them, or break it down to hours, but it can't reduce the minimum and as those are part of H&S legislation you are obliged to take them and they can't be carried over (EDIT - that should be there's a limit to how many you can carry over)
Full info here, also has a calculator for anyone who can't do the sums
https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights

[TPMB12]

11.2 is what I worked it out.  How do you apply the 0.2 part? That's 1 hour 42 minutes.

The reason I'm asking is because we have a few people on short weeks. I've been asked rather a few times about working out holidays. The works manager has put a list of everyone's holiday entitlement including shutdown holidays and the bank holidays they've got. In have been basically saying holidays are pro rata on number of days based on a full week getting 28 days. Hourly calculations are probably better because Fridays are half day,  just over half a day. I still treat fridays as full days because the company rules say it counts as a full holiday not a half day.

If we used hours to calculate I think the Friday =a full holiday gives a level of difficulty.

In our 2 days per week there's 4 fixed,  shutdown days to take this year. That drops the number of days it's possible to choose to 7.2 days. A lot less than 20 days put out by the works manager for the guy who cut his days to two days,  mid week.

There's been a couple of cock ups in this list and I've been the go to guy to check it out for them. That's why I've asked the question. It seems a simple prorata calculation based on 5 full days per working week = 28 days and every day less than 5 knocks off one fifth of 28 days. Half days count as full one's for holiday pay so in ignore the shortened hours.

I really don't know why people come to me because I've always worked full weeks with standard holidays. Usually 28 dates or 33 days due to long service. No reduced days/ hours to complicate things. So I could only use my common sense.

[Paul H]

If we used hours to calculate I think the Friday =a full holiday gives a level of difficulty.

If the entitlement is the statuary minimum they shouldn't be doing this, you're only supposed to use days if they're all of equal length, it'll be somewhere in the guidance above.
It should be based on hours, and again the link above will show how that's calculated. 

[bhoot]

When I went part time leave worked was worked out on an hourly basis.

If full time was, say 40 hours per week and I was doing part time at 30 hours per week it worked as follows:
28 days leave (assuming 8hrs per day) allocation works out at
28 days leave: 28*8*30/40 = 168 hours leave allocation.
10 bank holidays: 10*8*30/40 = 60 hours leave allocation; all bank holidays the fell on your work days were subtracted from your leave allocation for obvious reasons.
Total leave allocation: 228 hours

I do a 3 day week and as above my leave is worked out pro-rata against the normal total entitlement of (26 days + 8 bank holidays) ie I get 34 * (2/5) days (20 days). Any day when I work less than 3 days I need to use one day per "extra" day off. So a full week off costs 3 days of leave. Bank holidays that I don't work come out of the total 20 days, but given that I work for a French company I often don't have to take them if I don't want to.

I am also lucky enough that I don't always have to work the same days each week (it flexes around to sometimes suit me and sometimes suit the company) so I can get a surprisingly long time off for not much leave!

I don't think we have much officially written down as there aren't many part-timers but my last three bosses seem to have been OK with this.

[TPMB12]

If we used hours to calculate I think the Friday =a full holiday gives a level of difficulty.

If the entitlement is the statuary minimum they shouldn't be doing this, you're only supposed to use days if they're all of equal length, it'll be somewhere in the guidance above.
It should be based on hours, and again the link above will show how that's calculated.

Not equal days,  half day Friday.

[Andy64]

Funny how different company policy varies so much for a statutory holiday. I was always led to believe that, you were legally entitled to time off for bank holidays, whether you were scheduled to work them or not - if you work part time, say Wednesday and Thursday, you'd rarely see a bank holiday. Obviously, any time off would be pro rata
Before I retired, I was working 4 on/4 off 12 hour shifts, every 8 weeks there'd be an additional day off, along with shorter dayshift on Saturdays. This (supposedly) kept the average week to 39 hours.
If my shift fell on a bank holiday, I would get that day off with full pay, inc. shift allowance, or work it and be paid double time plus 8 hours off to be taken whenever. 
If my rota had me on a day off, I would be entitled to 8 hours off or paid in lieu - to be agreed between manager and my self

[Paul H]

If we used hours to calculate I think the Friday =a full holiday gives a level of difficulty.

If the entitlement is the statuary minimum they shouldn't be doing this, you're only supposed to use days if they're all of equal length, it'll be somewhere in the guidance above.
It should be based on hours, and again the link above will show how that's calculated.

Not equal days,  half day Friday.

Yes, so they shouldn't be using days as the unit, it's all there in the link above.
EDIT - Or linked to the above the full guidance pdf
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/865247/BEIS_Holiday_Entitlement_Calculation_Guidance.pdf

[Paul H]

Funny how different company policy varies so much for a statutory holiday. I was always led to believe that, you were legally entitled to time off for bank holidays, whether you were scheduled to work them or not - if you work part time, say Wednesday and Thursday, you'd rarely see a bank holiday. Obviously, any time off would be pro rata

it isn't a variation in company policy, it's a change in the statutory entitlement, though I'm not sure when that happened.  It used to be 20 days + BH's, now it's 28 days with no entitlement to them.

[TPMB12]

Used that government site calculator. It works out the same number of days whether using days or hours, 11.2 days per year using 5 days as a full week or using exact hours.

Interesting the 20 days given in holiday lists seems to work out if the short working week only runs for 6 months then reverts to full working week. I think someone got a bit confused in payroll side of things.

Thanks for all the help.  Think I'm in agreement with what's been said and the official calculator too.

[Dazz]

I have always had a team of full timers.  Last year I employed two people on a job-share, working this out was hell.  It seems that my simple plan of to simply halve the entitlement turned out to be way off beam!

Ask HR to sort it out!