Agencies and holiday accrual

ktothema

Hi all,

Quick question about accruing holiday whilst being agency staff. With the upcoming jubilee holidays I was trying to calculate if I'd have enough annual leave. I calculated that, if working 7hrs a day, at the standard 12.07% figure if need to work 9 days to get one back (rounding).

When I checked my holiday entitlement, they are actually accruing my holiday at a lower rate of 8%, but with a higher hourly rate of pay. So, if I work my 9 days, I'd only get just over 5hrs of leave, but the same pay as 7hrs at my normal rate.

Is this normal agency practice?

anamenottaken

ktothema wrote: »

Hi all,

Quick question about accruing holiday whilst being agency staff. With the upcoming jubilee holidays I was trying to calculate if I'd have enough annual leave. I calculated that, if working 7hrs a day, at the standard 12.07% figure if need to work 9 days to get one back (rounding).

When I checked my holiday entitlement, they are actually accruing my holiday at a lower rate of 8%, but with a higher hourly rate of pay. So, if I work my 9 days, I'd only get just over 5hrs of leave, but the same pay as 7hrs at my normal rate.

Is this normal agency practice?

Not normal practice in my experience.

Holiday is supposed to be time, not money as such.

How long have you worked for the agency? Have you been on the same rate of pay throughout?

ktothema

I've only worked with them 3 weeks. 1 week of one day, 2 of two days and looking like going to three days in week 5 (this is week 4 and I'll be doing another 2 days). All on the same pay rate. All for same client too.

After week 2 was inputted, the holiday amount has dropped to 5.3% but again, the rate of holiday pay has increased so that if I worked 9 days, the amount of accrued holiday x pay will equal my normal daily rate.

I'm hoping its just my newness and the odd day pattern confusing the online system, and that actually I've accrued correctly. Wanted to check if this was normal before asking the agency about it.

patman99

Right. How many days annual leave does your agency contract stipulate (this will usually include Bank Holidays). Once you have this info., Then you simply carry-out the following sum -

Annual leave/52= days per week. Now divide DPW by 5 to get your daily accrual rate.
From this, you can calculate very accurately your accrued time-off.

I'm having a spat with Just Recruitment over accrued holiday so know how frustrating it is.

getmore4less

patman99 wrote: »

Right. How many days annual leave does your agency contract stipulate (this will usually include Bank Holidays). Once you have this info., Then you simply carry-out the following sum -

Annual leave/52= days per week. Now divide DPW by 5 to get your daily accrual rate.
From this, you can calculate very accurately your accrued time-off.

I'm having a spat with Just Recruitment over accrued holiday so know how frustrating it is.

This is incorrect.

The correct calculation with Annual leave in weeks is

Annual leave/(52 - annual leave).

For a stautory minimum of 5.6 weeks this is 12.07%

anamenottaken

I don't know an agency which offers more than the statutory 5.6 weeks to its temporary workers during their first 12 weeks with a client. (Some may have to offer more after 12 weeks. That is if the client gives its directly employed workers more than the statutory minimum.)

The OP has mentioned using 12.07% which is the most accurate method for working out this basic holiday entitlement. It is 12.07% of hours worked - don't use it on days because days can be of different lengths.

patman99

The agency I work for gives us 36 days leave per year. They calculate this as 0.69 days/week. I work one short day (5.20 decimal hours) and 4 normal days each week, but still accrue holiday based on days worked, not hours worked in a day. So if I have Monday off, I still get the same accrued holiday for the week as if I had worked Monday and had the Friday off.

My spat with them is that their 'year' for taking leave is based on when a person starts their first assignment. They recon that even though my 2nd year started on 12th April, I had not accrued enough to pay for May b/h. I have used their calculations to prove that over 2 weeks and 2 days I did accrue enough. Strangely, they are now trying to ignore me. Which is a really bad move on their part as I will simply step-up my 'enquiry' with an email to the MD.

ktothema

I get 29 days holiday this year, pro rata of course. Was quite impressed to see that I'd get the extra day allowance. But as I'm working an odd pattern, I thought it safer to use the 12.07% calculation.

Even on an amount per day rather than hour, the hours I've accrued are far less than what I think I'm entitled to, but the pay rate is higher than normal. Meaning that if I took a holiday after 9 days work, I'd get the same pay as for 7hrs at my normal rate, but may only use 3/4/5 accrued holiday hours.

I won't be there for more than a few months anyway as I'm pregnant again, so I'm not really fussed as long as I get the right amount of money. But it seemed very odd to me.

getmore4less

patman99 wrote: »

The agency I work for gives us 36 days leave per year. They calculate this as 0.69 days/week.

36/52 = 0.69

That is the incorrect way to do holidays.
For that to work you need to acrue holidays on holidays.

If you don't accrue holiday on holidays then you get 31.5 days(still good).
31.5/(52 - 6.3) = 0.69

how do they define the holidays and how do they pay them especialy when you finish.

patman99

They pay 36 days per year (on full-time). This includes the Bank Holidays. So we get (for 2012) 26 days + 10 Bank Holidays (there are normally 9 per year).

Even using the 12.07% calculation on the actual 37.67 hours I work would give me enough accrued holiday to have been paid May b/h.
My calcs are based on -

9 days @ 8.08 hours p/day + 3 days @ 5.20 hours p/day *0.1207 = 10.66 hr