Part timers
With the Christmas holiday season almost upon us, including the last Bank Holidays of the year, we’ve seen a spike in inquiries on how part-time staff are affected by entitlement to bank holiday leave, and it’s inspired us to share our thoughts with you.
Tuesday’s child…
Do you have an employee who avoids the Monday blues by working Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday? If Christmas falls on a Sunday like it does this year, they effectively ‘miss out on one of the days off work due to a bank holiday because Boxing Day is a Monday and, therefore their non-working day anyway. If you compare them to an employee in the same or similar role who works Monday to Wednesday, it hardly seems fair that they ‘get’ these days of work. How can you ensure you remain fair and impartial when you calculate their bank holiday entitlement – tricky, isn’t it?
According to the invaluable resource of Gov.uk, your full-time employees are entitled to a minimum of 28 days paid holiday per annum and this can include time taken on bank holidays when your business might choose to close. The same entitlement is also true of your part-time employees, although adjusted on a pro-rata basis in accordance with the days they work.
For your workers on shift or irregular hours – for example, term time workers – they are entitled to paid time off for every hour they work.
Spire HR to the rescue!
What this means in real terms is that it all comes down to your employment contracts and ensuring these are up-to-date and specific to the relevant employees. For example, if you normally close on bank holidays, you need to state this in your employee contracts. This will mean both full AND part-time staff members will effectively use some of their paid leave for bank holidays that fall on their usual working days. If bank holiday days do NOT fall on an employee’s working days, they will have the leave to use at another time.
What this doesn’t mean is that people who work on days not typically bank holidays have more annual leave, it simply means they haven’t had to use their leave entitlement to be paid on a day they are not usually at work. Effectively, you need to ensure your part-time employees qualify for the same total amount of paid time off each year, regardless of which days they work in relation to the bank holidays, because the amount of bookable leave used for bank holidays depends on the dates the bank holidays fall on.
As your local approachable, experienced HR specialists, Spire HR is well versed in helping you create and implement employment contracts that are fair, fit for purpose, in plain English and up-to-date ensuring an informed, empowered, and happy workforce.
Protect your company. Invest in your staff. Get in touch today at 01925 626253.
