Early Finish on a Friday

newmum2be

Hi all - just hoping someone can help me get my head around something!

I work a 37 hour week, 8.30am until 5pm Mon to Thu and 8.30am until 2pm on a Friday.

Until today I have always taken the Friday as a half day when I have taken it off as leave, but am now being told by someone (who isn't in HR) that it should in fact be taken as a full day.

I am really struggling to see why it should have to be taken as a full day, when, unlike every other day, I'm taking a whole day of leave only to take three hours less time away from the office because of the early finish.

Am I wrong? Confused?

Also, other staff with less holiday allowance (less by about 6 days) apparently ARE allowed to take the Friday as a half day, justified because their Friday is 7.30am until 11pm and because of the lower holiday allowance. This seems very unfair as if they were clever about it they could do very well out of it!

Any advice much appreciated.

Thank you

Laura

hellywobs

I know it's not the answer you want but the person is right. In my last job I worked a 4.5 day week with a half day on Wednesdays and if I took a Wed off I had to take a full day's leave. My husband works flexi hours with 3 longer days and 2 shorter days and again, if he takes a Tues or a Thurs off he has to take a full day's leave. The moral is to take as much leave as possible on the long days :-):j

Slinky

I worked somewhere that had similar arrangements. We were allowed to take 4 Fridays a year as half days, any more than that it used to be a whole day.

I seem to recall some sort of explanation that if you took a whole week off, you would be obliged to taking 5 days of holidays, not 4.5 days of holidays. I understood it at the time and it seemed to make sense. I work for myself now so have no concept of paid holidays anymore.

SarEl

I don't agree. People are entitled to their full holiday and if their work pattern is "odd" that doesn't mean that they are entitled to less annual leave. So if you work 37 hours per week and get the statutory holiday of 5.6 weeks your annual leave is 37 x 5.6 = 207.2 hours. And leave should be calculated then in hours taken, not days taken. Of course, the "bad here" is that if your employer wants to be utterly pedantic about it - you loose more holiday by taking a Monday! It works perfectly if you take full weeks, but imperfectly if you don't. But technically someone is entitled (assuming their employer agrees) to only ever take Friday as holiday - 20 Fridays plus bank holidays. In which case they would not get 20 days holiday - which in the minimum (excluding banks holidays) required by law. But taking a Friday should not mean that you loose out on the holiday entitlement.

westv

I can see the logic of the argument for a full day. Whilst you may work less hours compared to Monday to Thursday, the Friday could still be considered a full day as you normally work the full number of hours for that day mentioned in your contract of employment.

KiKi

I agree with SarEl; you're entitled to 5.6 weeks, but you work odd hours. Therefore if you're taking a whole week off if doesn't matter, but an odd Friday does.

Personally, I wouldn't complain about it - if you insist that a full day off for Friday isn't fair, then your employer can quite fairly ask you to take more than a day's leave for Mon-Thurs. It probably evens out across the year, as long as you're not only taking Fridays off!

Look at it this way: you might not feel it's fair because it's three hours less than another day, but is it also fair that you're only taking a half-day for 6.5 hours work? Three hours off a full day for you is actually 2/3 of a day, not a half-day, so you've had it pretty good so far!

So unless you're taking loads of Fridays off every year, it probably works out slightly in your favour, and the full day isn't that much of an issue. As long as you're getting your 5.6 weeks, I wouldn't make an issue of it.

HTH
KiKi

albacookie

I work 4.5 days a week too and if we take a week off it counts as 5 days leave but if we just book an odd day we can take a half day's leave.

Bobl

I would have thought that it depends on whether you are booking your leave in hours or days. If you work an 8 hour day, but are contracted for 7.5, then you should be booking 8 hours of leave Mon-Thu, rather than a day. However, if you are booking 5 days off, then it makes no difference for you to book 5 days leave, you lose nothing.

It only affects you if you only take a Friday off, in which case I would advise you to work less hours on the other days if the company will not allow you to book half a day.

The key question is; is the person how told you this in a management position and therefore in a position to enforce this, or is this just jealousy?

bristol_pilot

The rules on this vary from one company to another, so it is no good really asking other people on this forum. Check with your boss, company hand book or HR. We actually operate both systems at my company!

LittleVoice

bristol_pilot wrote: »

The rules on this vary from one company to another, so it is no good really asking other people on this forum. Check with your boss, company hand book or HR. We actually operate both systems at my company!

The "rules" in a company may say what they like but they cannot actually override the statutory entitlement to paid leave - which in the OP's case should be calculated on hours rather than days.

Judith_W

They should really be treating your holiday in hours rather than days. That would be fairer for everyone.