Calculating bank holiday entitlement for part-timers

Here’s an example.  A part timer who works every Monday to Wednesday is likely to benefit from more bank holidays than one who works every Wednesday to Friday, unless you make an adjustment (because more bank holidays fall on a Monday than any other day) 

What can I do to make our HR policies fair part-time workers?

  • Bank holiday entitlements for part time employees are prorated according to the hours that they work, in the same way as annual leave.  
  • For example, someone working three days out of five is entitled to three fifths of the statutory entitlement. 
  • Once you have prorated a part time employee’s bank holiday entitlement, you need to decide how you are going to manage it. 
  • You may choose to work out how many of their working days will actually fall on a bank holiday and compare it to the number of days they are entitled to. 
  • In this case it may be that they will need more or less of their bank holiday entitlement, depending on the days of the week that they work. (This is where our examples comes in to play…) 
  • As an example, take an employee who works three full days per week, so an FTE of 0.6.  They are entitled to 4.8 bank holidays in one year. 
  • Now, if their working pattern is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they are quite likely to need to take more bank holiday days than their prorated allowance. 
  • In this case the extra days should be deducted from their annual leave allowance to make up the days. 
  • If their working pattern was Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday then they will likely use less bank holidays than their prorated allowance. 
  • The excess days should therefore be added onto their annual leave allowance as they are still entitled to them. 

Is there an alternative? 

Is there an alternative? 

  • Yes!  The alternative is to calculate their prorated annual leave and their prorated bank holiday entitlements and add them together and give the employee one allowance. 
  • The employee must then book all and any days off that fall on their usual working days, including bank holidays. 

It can be quite complicated, if you’ve got any specific queries, please do get in touch by using the contact form below:

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