How to easily calculate holiday entitlement for part-time workers
You probably know that full-time employees are entitled to 28 days’ paid annual leave. But what about part-time employees?
Holiday entitlement calculations are a bit trickier for part-time employees… But don’t worry, we’ll walk you through it.
A part-time employee is pro-rated to a full-time employee’s entitlement and is based around their working week.
To calculate their holiday entitlement, use the following formula:
5.6 days x number of working days = Holiday entitlement
Examples of annual leave entitlement for part-time workers
| Part-timer’s working week | Statutory annual entitlement |
| One day a week or equivalent (e.g. two half days) | 5.6 days (5.6 x 1 = 5.6) |
| One-and-a-half days | 8.4 days (5.6 x 1.5 = 8.4) |
| Two days | 11.2 days (5.6 x 2 = 11.2) |
| Two-and-a-half days (half a week) | 14 days (5.6 x 2.5 = 14) |
| Three days | 16.8 days (5.6 x 3 = 16.8) |
| Four days | 22.4 days (5.6 x 4 = 22.4) |
If you wish to give more holidays than the statutory entitlement you must ensure that your part time employees also receive the additional entitlement on a pro rata basis.
For example, if full-time workers are entitled to 33 days’ holiday per year, a person who works four days per week should be entitled to take 26.4 days’ holiday per year (4 ÷ 5 x 33 = 26.4).
By law, you cannot round down the leave. There is no obligation to round up the leave, but you can do so if preferred. So, if an employee has 26.4 days holidays, the holidays may be rounded up to 26.5 days, but they may not be reduced to 26 days.
Statutory provision is capped at 28 days and even though some employees may work 6 or 7 days per week, their entitlement will remain at 28 days.
Bank and public holidays
There are normally eight specified bank holidays each year. More may be offered in Scotland and Northern Ireland but the statutory provision is eight.
Problems can arise where employees are entitled to bank holidays off work on top of their annual leave entitlement.
This is because most bank holidays fall on a Monday, so a part-timer who works on a Monday will have a higher proportion of their holidays “fixed” than a colleague working on a Tuesday or Wednesday for example.
(At least four days of a Monday worker’s holidays will be fixed bank holidays. The Tuesday worker will only incur fixed bank holidays when Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year’s Day Fall on a Tuesday.)
If an employee is normally scheduled to work on a bank holiday and receives this day off as a fixed holiday, their holiday entitlement should automatically be reduced by one day.
If an employee is not normally contracted or scheduled to work on a day when a bank holiday falls, this does not affect their holiday entitlement as it is not a working day.
The easiest and fairest way of calculating entitlements is to deal with all the holidays as an inclusive amount. So, if a full time employee is entitled to 25 days annual leave plus eight bank holidays, this gives a total of 33 days per annum.
This can be expressed as 6.6 weeks’ holiday (33 ÷ 5 = 6.6). Calculating leave in this way will ensure employers always meet the statutory minimum.
You can then easily calculate a part timers total entitlement, for example, an employee working three days per week would be entitled to 6.6 x 3 (days) = 19.8 days holiday per year.
Calculating annual leave as a number of hours per year
Where someone works different hours each day, holiday entitlement may be expressed as a number of hours per annum.
If your full time employees are entitled to 25 days annual leave plus eight bank holidays for example (which gives 33 days in total per annum) the entitlement of a part time worker who works 20 hours per week would be calculated as 20 (hours per week) x 6.6 = 132 hours holiday per year.
Again, this calculation includes the bank holiday entitlement.
If a part-timer who works 5 hours on a Tuesday and 7 on a Wednesday wishes to take these days as holiday, their annual entitlement would be reduced by 12 hours.
Further advice and support
If you require advice or support, why not download our monthly Employment Law Guide. You can also contact us.
