Employers are of course aware of
the requirement to pay its workforce a certain amount of paid leave every year.
But what about casual workers, are they also entitled to paid holiday leave?
Let’s take a look.
Every worker is entitled to 5.6
weeks of paid annual holiday and accrued holiday pay on termination, calculated
from the first day of their employment contract.
When you have workers on a 5-day,
40-hour working week, it is straightforward to calculate their entitlement to
28 days of paid holiday per year. For other regular shift patterns, it is
simply a case of multiplying the number of working days each week by 5.6 to
discover the yearly entitlement. However, when it comes to workers with
irregular working patterns such as casual workers or those on zero hours
contracts, it gets a little trickier to make the calculation. But these people
are still entitled to statutory leave, so it is important to know how to work
out their entitlement.
Casual worker calculations
The most straightforward way of
working out holiday entitlement for casual workers is to award them accrued
entitlement. In other words, they get to earn holiday entitlement based on the
number of hours they have actually worked.
You will need to ensure your
employees accrue the minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid leave. To do this, there is a
rule you can apply. This is the ‘rule of 12.07 per cent’. This means that for
each hour an employee works, 12.07 per cent of it, i.e. 7.242 minutes, is paid
holiday entitlement.
So for example, workers who
complete three 8-hour shifts every week for four weeks will accrue 11.5872
hours of holiday entitlement. This means they can book almost one and a half
shifts off work, and still be entitled to get paid.
For businesses operating outside
of regular hours, for example those that open on bank holidays, these can be
included in the standard holiday allowance. So whilst there is a reduction in
the number of days employees are able to book as paid leave, it does mean they
get paid for bank holidays.
To improve morale and staff
retention, some employers increase the amount of paid leave they offer their
workers. For example, some employers will offer both the standard 28 days of
paid leave, or the equivalent for casual workers, plus bank holidays.
If you are uncertain about how
much leave to pay your casual workers for, or any workers for that matter, your
bookkeepers will be able to help you make the calculations.
