Compressed hours and booking off bank holidays - General - Flexible and hybrid working

6 Compressed hours and booking off bank holidays

17 Oct, 2022 11:33

Hello everyone...

Any experts on flexible working and annual leave entitlements in the house?

An employee who is on flexible working (compressed hours 9-7pm Mon- Thur) is requesting that we (HR) book off their bank holidays for them (on the days there's a bank holiday). We've explained that because of the change in their working hours, their leave would now be in hours and that they have to do the bank holidays booking themselves - same way someone who is term time or part time would do. They don't agree because their contract doesn't include working on bank holidays, and they didn't have to book bank holidays when they were 9-5 Mon- Friday. We explained that this is because their leave then was in days and the BH entitlement was not added to their leaves then but with the change to flexible working we've added the BH hours and they'd have to book it off.

Are we being inflexible? Can we book the BH for them or remove the BH hours from their entitlement?

If it helps, our leaves are 25days excluding BH so we already meet/exceed the 5.6 weeks statutory requirement.

Looking forward to your responses.

Thank you
D.

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Robey | 0 Posts

17 Oct, 2022 12:42

I see no reason why you *can't* book their Bank Holidays for them. It's a little lazy on their part, but good customer service principles would suggest that, if you can help reduce the friction between where you are (holiday not booked) and where you want to be (holiday booked) with minimal effort, you should do it.

The days/hours thing is a total red herring. You know how many hours they would normally work on any given day. Just book them that many hours off on that day.
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Damola | 0 Posts

25 Oct, 2022 16:32

In reply to Robey:
Thank you Robey
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Nina Waters | 0 Posts

26 Oct, 2022 15:49

It does depend though on whether their entitlement is sufficient for the number of bank holidays they need due to their working arrangement. If they only work Mondays and Tuesdays for example, they will never have enough entitlement, so will need some of those days to be taken as holiday. Are they asking you to book their holiday off too, and decide whether it will be deducted or unpaid?

Another consideration is whether you are flexible in allowing someone in that situation to work a different day in the week - I used to do this in an organisation that had a lot of people who only worked for one day a week, so if that day happened to be a Monday would effectively lose the ability to allocate any of their annual leave. If you are prepared to be flexible, the employees may benefit from retaining that control themselves in deciding how they want their bank holiday allowance to be spent.

Equally, lots of people find bank holiday leave for part time staff confusing. Would it help to offer to sit and go through it with them, and help them identify/book the right days?
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Damola | 0 Posts

27 Oct, 2022 09:55

In reply to Nina Waters:
Thank you Nina. Yes their entitlements covers the number of BHs… they don’t work Fridays.. They are asking us to book the hours that fall on BH days - Easter Monday, Christmas and Boxing Day this year … etc for them rather than them booking it off on themselves
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Katarzyna | 0 Posts

13 Dec, 2022 13:40

In my view , as long as staff are not required to be available to work on BH ever and especially when they are Full Time , the easiest thing to do is to book all BH off at the start of the year. Although their hours are compressed, they still work full time and they still have the full time BH entitlement, so I would not see a problem in taking them off the HR system.
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Katarzyna | 0 Posts

13 Dec, 2022 13:44

However i have a problem explaining to managers that shift workers ( those who need to be available to work Mon - Sun and also during BH , should not be asked to book BH if it fall on the day they were not put on the rota. Unless I am missing something , I could really do with others opinions.
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