How does a birthday holiday work?

Spendless

I've been offered a job to start next month which isn't overly generous with AL and also has the double whammy of a long Christmas shutdown which you have to save your AL for.

This means for this year I won't have a great deal of AL to use once I start there for things I'd like to do towards the end of the year.

My new employer does give your birthday off though.. It's not something I've ever experienced before so can someone say how this typically works (my contract hasn't come through yet)?. Do you usually  have to take your birthday  off - mine falls midweek this year, whereas if you can have a nearby day instead then I could tag to a weekend and make it that I could do one of the things I'd like to. 

mr_stripey

I imagine it would be something like this - the leave aims to give the employee a 'day off' on his or her birthday or to form a 'long weekend' immediately before or afterward.

DullGreyGuy

With my current client they give perms 2 extra "days" which ultimately are holidays like any others but you can technically donate them to a colleague if you want (a conversation the other day only recalled one incident of it happening). They are intended to be used for a celebration be that your birthday, anniversary, Pride, religious thing or whatever but there is no enforcement of that. 

A previous place did just birthday and you had to use it within a week either side of your birthday.

TELLIT01

The only way to know with certainty is to ask the employer.  It may be a day that can be taken at any time, or it may be that you don't have to work on your birthday.  If the latter it's just tough luck if your birthday happens to be a non-working day.

housebuyer143

My work gave you your birthday off but they basically let you take it whenever so it's just an extra days leave. I imagine everyone does it different.

jackieblack

TELLIT01 said:

The only way to know with certainty is to ask the employer.  It may be a day that can be taken at any time, or it may be that you don't have to work on your birthday.  If the latter it's just tough luck if your birthday happens to be a non-working day.

This ^^^

My daughter’s previous employer gave everyone their birthday off but it had to be taken on the actual birthday and if that fell on a day they weren’t due to work that was bad luck.

Spendless

jackieblack said:

TELLIT01 said:

The only way to know with certainty is to ask the employer.  It may be a day that can be taken at any time, or it may be that you don't have to work on your birthday.  If the latter it's just tough luck if your birthday happens to be a non-working day.

This ^^^

My daughter’s previous employer gave everyone their birthday off but it had to be taken on the actual birthday and if that fell on a day they weren’t due to work that was bad luck.

That must have been really unfair on the people whose birthday fell say December 25th/ 26th or Jan 1st (assuming they were shut these days). For everyone else you might cop for a weekend or  for some a BH birthday but not every single year  

TELLIT01

Spendless said:

jackieblack said:

TELLIT01 said:

The only way to know with certainty is to ask the employer.  It may be a day that can be taken at any time, or it may be that you don't have to work on your birthday.  If the latter it's just tough luck if your birthday happens to be a non-working day.

This ^^^

My daughter’s previous employer gave everyone their birthday off but it had to be taken on the actual birthday and if that fell on a day they weren’t due to work that was bad luck.

That must have been really unfair on the people whose birthday fell say December 25th/ 26th or Jan 1st (assuming they were shut these days). For everyone else you might cop for a weekend or  for some a BH birthday but not every single year  

Such is life.  If everybody can only take the 'birthday holiday' on their actual birthday, there is no discrimination, so nothing the employee can do about it.

housebuyer143

TELLIT01 said:

Spendless said:

jackieblack said:

TELLIT01 said:

The only way to know with certainty is to ask the employer.  It may be a day that can be taken at any time, or it may be that you don't have to work on your birthday.  If the latter it's just tough luck if your birthday happens to be a non-working day.

This ^^^

My daughter’s previous employer gave everyone their birthday off but it had to be taken on the actual birthday and if that fell on a day they weren’t due to work that was bad luck.

That must have been really unfair on the people whose birthday fell say December 25th/ 26th or Jan 1st (assuming they were shut these days). For everyone else you might cop for a weekend or  for some a BH birthday but not every single year  

Such is life.  If everybody can only take the 'birthday holiday' on their actual birthday, there is no discrimination, so nothing the employee can do about it.

No, but that's really unfair and bad for moral. A decent employer would ensure that everyone was entitled to the same inventive.

peb

Yup. Only the birthday on the day it falls where I was.  Plus we had the afternoon only, and if you wanted the day you had to book a full days leave.   

A nice extra but not a reason to go for that employer 

SensibleSarah

Thankfully I've never had a 'only on the actual day' employer! Mine have always specified that it's the day of your birthday if that's a working day, and the previous or next working day if not, but it's never been strictly enforced. If you ask for another day instead, as long as it's fairly close to the birthday, it's never been refused.