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Holiday entitlement can be difficult to work out if you don’t work regular hours. Workingmums.co.uk spells out your rights.
What are your rights to holidays when you are employed? The minimum statutory holiday entitlement for full timers is 28 days which may include bank holidays. Bank holidays do not have to be given as extra, but if they are given as extra to full timers any flexible workers are entitled to a pro-rata of what full timers get. The Government has an online calculator where you can calculate your entitlement based on the minimum holiday entitlement.
For part-timers who work, say, two or three full days a week holiday entitlement is fairly straightforward. You are entitled to a pro-rata of whatever full timers at your organisation get, so, for example, if you work two full days a week and full timers work five days a week you would get two fifths of whatever full timers at your organisation get, including bank holidays – irrespective of which days you work. People sometimes get confused due to the bank holidays because most fall on Mondays. If you are part time and work on Mondays, your work closes on bank holidays and you are forced to take the day off as paid leave you will have less choice over when you take your holidays. However, that doesn’t mean that you will have less holiday.
If you work compressed hours you should calculate your holiday in terms of hours worked so if you work the same amount of hours as full-time workers you should get the same number of hours in holiday [rather than days], including bank holidays. For each day’s holiday you would need to deduct the number of hours you normally work in that day.
You can work out holiday entitlement by calculating hours worked annually. Government guidance issued last year after a Supreme Court ruling means leave will be accrued based on 12.07% of hours worked in the pay period [12.07% represents the proportion that 5.6 weeks of annual leave equates to throughout the year], regardless of whether that pay period is monthly, weekly or daily. That means these workers will have to earn their holiday as they work. An annual leave accrual method has been introduced for when irregular hours workers and part-year workers take sick leave or maternity/family related leave.
If shifts are the same weekly you can work your leave entitlement out based on a pro rata of full-time workers’ holidays. If shift patterns vary, you will need to work this out over a longer period, according to an established repeating pattern.
This is calculated as the lower of:
a) 5.6 weeks x average shifts per week; or
b) 28 days’ worth of shifts
Average shifts per week are calculated as: (Shifts per shift pattern ÷ Calendar days per shift pattern) x 7.
If you work a fraction of a day you would need to work out your holiday in terms of hours worked in a week and pro rata this compared to what a full-time worker in your organisation works. You would get a pro rata of bank holidays too.
If you are on a zero hours contract and work regular hours, holiday entitlement accrues in the same way as for those on permanent contracts. However, due to the sometimes irregular nature of hours, leave may be calculated based on the irregular hours rule.
When a worker starts a job, the timing of their leave year may be specified in a relevant agreement. If the worker’s leave year is not specified in an agreement, then it simply starts on the first day of the job. You will get a pro rata of your annual leave entitlement if you start after the beginning of the annual leave year.