How do I work out part time holiday entitlement?

bootman

Hi

How much holiday do I get please. I work part time. 3.5 hours a day 5 days a week. If I were full time I would have 21 days for the year.

I started middle of September and the holiday year ends 31st December.

How much can I have till the end of the year? I am also entitled to all 8 of the bank holidays as extra.

Thanks

Lois_Lane

Hi bootman - do people who work full time also work five days a week? If so, then you get 21 days per annum, the same as they do. According to my calculations you are entitled to 6.5 days holiday plus remaining bank holidays for this year.

LL

stressedoutmum

It depends on how your firm work it. In ours you only accrue holiday entitlement for each full month you are there ie Oct, Nov and Dec if you started in the middle of September. This means you would be entitled to about a quarter of the full time entitlement ie approx 5 days. Can't you checkwith your HR Department??

bootman

Thank you. It is a small company and I am the only part time person. When they did my contract they could not figure out what I should get and its kind of been left. Full timers do work 5 days a week. MY contract does have the word ACCRUE in it. I have worked out it is 6.125 hours a month. Do I round that up or down? I started on the 11th September so do I lose out for part of a month?

Thanks everyone.

kelloggs36

Usually when you are part-time, they calculate it in hours and pro-rata it. So, if you work 5 days per week then you would get 21 days leave, but clearly as you only work 3.5 hours per day, then only 3.5 hrs X 21 will be holiday and paid accordingly. If you started part-way through the month, holiday would be pro-rata for that month.

Your annual entitlement looks to be 73.5 hours.

Between September and the end of December you should be entitled to 1.75 days per full month which would amount to 12.25 hours plus the pro-rata bit for September which is about 3.8 hours. It is a rough calculation as I do not know how they calculate the holidays - per month or by days. Altogether though, it looks like you should get about 16 hours holiday.

filigree_2

You could look at this guidance on holiday entitlement which includes part time workers. The point to remember is that you have the same rights as your full time colleagues, pro rata according to your working hours.

I had this debate with HR myself - I work part time, 5 hours per day Mon-Fri. Eventually I found some advice on the Department of Trade and Industry site (sorry I lost the link) which confirmed that if you work the same number of days as full timers, then you are entitled to the same number of days off. Overall, you should get 21 days off work same as everyone else. I clawed back 8 days of leave which I would otherwise have lost!

As for calculating what you can take in a partial year, in my experience HR bods have a sliding scale to follow and will usually calculate what you are owed and then round it up to the nearest half day or nearest whole day if you are lucky!

I would suggest that somewhere between 6-7 days would be about right. Even if you are the only part timer, your employers need to get to grips with their annual leave policy because they have a legal obligation to give you a fair deal in line with full timers.

jobbingmusician

Your sums could be extra easy if the full time people work 35 hours a week, as lots of people do. You work a tenth of the time, so need to divide everything by 10!

This should be true for ALL your benefits - you should be earning a tenth of the full time equivalent, as well