Compressed Working Hours and Holiday use - aaarrrggghhh!

JohnD80

Hi everyone, I'm new here but trying to get some advice on a matter me and my employer can't agree on.

I work 4.5 days a week (half day Friday) on what I believe is a compressed working hours contract - these hours are written clearly in my contract. To take a Monday off I put in a day's leave and for a Friday, a half day. Many colleagues are on a 5 day, 7.5 hour contract so to align with my colleagues and ensure equality my employer says that to take a day off on a Friday I need to put in a full day of leave and take a bit of time off in the week so that I will have done 7.5 hours Mon-Thu and taken a full day off leave Friday totaling 37.5 hours a week. This doesn't feel reasonable to me. I think that I should be able to work my 33 hours Mon-Thu and take a half day off on Friday to make my 37.5 hour week.

I think the situation is muddled by IT systems that don't support leave taken in hours and the fact that there's very few of us on this arrangement so we appear to have a better deal than everyone else. I actually think they put an informal half day Friday into my contract at which point it became a formal agreement but they can't see the difference. My leave hasn't been scaled down either to reflect my 4.5 day week so that does leave me "better of" than many others in the business.

Does anyone have any advice? I'm trying to resolve this amicably but I feel like I'm losing out and being asked to work in a way that's not in my contract. Can they really direct that I use a full day of leave for a half day off work? Wouldn't dealing in his just make this all go away? Please help me find a way through this! 

KatrinaWaves

To me it does appear that you are getting a good deal currently. Your full day off is more holiday hours than everyone else gets for a day off, and yet you only need to do a half day for fridays, so for the same effective time out of work, you only use 1.5 days where everyone else uses 2, therefore you have a quarter (ish) more holiday time than everyone else whilst still working the same hours as the rest of the team. (Just using two days a week as an example, it wouldn’t be that all the time)

Does putting it that way put it into some perspective? I assumed you asked for the compressed hours, so it’s a bit of a perk. Me, a bitter worker, would probably be annoyed you not only got an early finish every Friday but also got more holiday ‘hours’ than me. 

Taking a week at a time wouldn’t make a difference but odd days like you describe would. 

JohnD80

Thanks for the reply, I didn't actually ask for it at interview, it was just offered so I assumed that everyone else had the same arrangement. I've been blissfully unaware of this difference for the 3 years I've been with the company, amazingly it only came to light this year. 

I can fully understand how someone else might not be pleased that I've got an arrangement like this which is why I think HR has done it in error. Of course at interview I didn't think to ask if everyone else had this in place. It feels like the right way to address this is to change my contract to align with everyone else (where I'll lose out a bit but at least be the same as the rest) or the rest of the team gets the opportunity for a contract like mine (and a small number of others who are also in this position). 

LittleVoice

JohnD80 said:

Hi everyone, I'm new here but trying to get some advice on a matter me and my employer can't agree on.

I work 4.5 days a week (half day Friday) on what I believe is a compressed working hours contract - these hours are written clearly in my contract. To take a Monday off I put in a day's leave and for a Friday, a half day. Many colleagues are on a 5 day, 7.5 hour contract so to align with my colleagues and ensure equality my employer says that to take a day off on a Friday I need to put in a full day of leave and take a bit of time off in the week so that I will have done 7.5 hours Mon-Thu and taken a full day off leave Friday totaling 37.5 hours a week. This doesn't feel reasonable to me. I think that I should be able to work my 33 hours Mon-Thu and take a half day off on Friday to make my 37.5 hour week.

I think the situation is muddled by IT systems that don't support leave taken in hours and the fact that there's very few of us on this arrangement so we appear to have a better deal than everyone else. I actually think they put an informal half day Friday into my contract at which point it became a formal agreement but they can't see the difference. My leave hasn't been scaled down either to reflect my 4.5 day week so that does leave me "better of" than many others in the business.

Does anyone have any advice? I'm trying to resolve this amicably but I feel like I'm losing out and being asked to work in a way that's not in my contract. Can they really direct that I use a full day of leave for a half day off work? Wouldn't dealing in his just make this all go away? Please help me find a way through this! 

Given that your employer can tell you when to take holiday, it is possible that they have the right to do as they are suggesting.  They are saying you take, say, 1 hour's holiday on Monday through Thursday and then the 4.5 hours on Friday to equal 7.5 hours.

However, you are correct in that if you always work 4.5 hours on a Friday then to take Friday off you should use only 4.5 hours of your holiday entitlement.  Your holiday entitlement should be worked out in hours rather than days because you do not work the same number of hours each day.

Masomnia

I think you're both wrong and your annual leave entitlement should calculated in hours rather than days.

JohnD80

Masomnia said:

I think you're both wrong and your annual leave entitlement should calculated in hours rather than days.

Thanks both, I think because our leave system only works in days they're trying to drive in behaviours to make it right but by the same token it undoes some of the benefits of my contract. After all the appears to be no point having a CWH contract if I have to behave as if I have a 5 day contract. Accounting in hours or scaling the entitlement in days would make this go away I think. 

I would have thought that my leave (since we only deal in days and half days) was scaled down as a result of this (it wasn't), hence the advantageous position I have over others. I assumed that my 25 days for a 4.5 day week equated to 28 days for everyone else. I can see how this is a management nightmare but we can't seem to get past a position where they think I'm abusing the system and I think they've made an error.

JReacher1

You do slightly more than half a day though on a Friday. If you are doing a four and a half hour day on a Friday that is more than half a day so allowing you to book a half day would mean the company is missing out. 

In addition if they let you book a half day you could book a weeks holiday and only take four and a half days. 

I think what they are doing seems perfectly fine. If you want a half day on Friday then you need to book a full day and then take the three hours you’re owed during the week.  

Personally I think your holiday situation seems quite generous, especially if they let you book Monday - Thursday as just a day (even though you work more than a day). I would suspect unless you are planning on only ever booking Fridays off when the year is over you will have had more hours off than your colleague have. 

Brackenfield

Ideally you should have holidays in hours.  However, in days, you work 5 days a week, they just happen to be days of differing lengths.  If you take a full week off that should be 5 days.  So a friday off is a full days holiday, it doesn't matter if it's a 5 hour or 10 hour day; it's a full day of your working day.

flashg67

My work calculate all leave in hours. We all start with  28 days x 7 hrs per annum. So for me, on a  5 day , 35 hr week, 1 days holiday = 7 hours off my entitlement. For a colleague who does 4 day 35 hr week, 1 day holiday = 8.75 hours of his entitlement.  For CWH, doing it hourly is the only accurate way. We had someone for years who 'got away' with what you appear to have and there were some unhappy faces when it became common knowledge!

JohnD80

flashg67 said:

My work calculate all leave in hours. We all start with  28 days x 7 hrs per annum. So for me, on a  5 day , 35 hr week, 1 days holiday = 7 hours off my entitlement. For a colleague who does 4 day 35 hr week, 1 day holiday = 8.75 hours of his entitlement.  For CWH, doing it hourly is the only accurate way. We had someone for years who 'got away' with what you appear to have and there were some unhappy faces when it became common knowledge!

Yes, I thought this was what was happening and my line manager has been approving it all the while. Of course now it's all coming to a bit of a head! I agree that hours would be the common currency but they seem either unwilling or unable to make that leap. 

Masomnia

Brackenfield said:

Ideally you should have holidays in hours.  However, in days, you work 5 days a week, they just happen to be days of differing lengths.  If you take a full week off that should be 5 days.  So a friday off is a full days holiday, it doesn't matter if it's a 5 hour or 10 hour day; it's a full day of your working day.

This is fine if you only ever take full weeks off.

Which reminds me... what about bank hols? Half of these are Friday this year and you have to take full days off even though you're only contracted for half days?

I think just on this you're probably missing out on statutory entitlement.