WFM UK: Holidays: Adding an Extra Bank Holiday

Overview

On rare occasions, the UK will have more than the usual 8 bank holidays in the calendar year, as seen in recent years for royal jubilees, weddings and coronations. This article provides guidance on how to handle additional bank holidays in the HR module and add them to employees' holiday records.

Do Employees Have to be Given the Additional Day?

The requirement to provide employees with an additional day's holiday depends on the terms and conditions within their contract of employment.

For example, 

• A contract that states '20 days plus bank holidays' suggests that every bank holiday (including extra ones) should be added to the statutory 20-day entitlement
  However...
• A contract that states '20 days plus 8 bank holidays' suggests that employees are only entitled to the standard 8 bank holidays and no extra ones

 Fourth advises seeking guidance from a legal team if there is any uncertainty over whether employees should be given, or be paid for, an additional bank holiday.

Adding an Additional Holiday Day to an Employee's Entitlement

There are two main ways to change the entitlement on employee records.

1. Use the 'carry over' holiday functionality to add an extra day for each employee
   or
2. Amend the allowed weeks within the Job Title settings

Option 1 - Carry Over Holiday

As part of the Covid-19 response, Fourth created the ability to add 'carried over' holiday onto an employee's current or following year's entitlement. This can be done in bulk with a batch upload. Guidance on how to do this can be found here - WFM HR: Carrying Over Holidays.

 Please note: Holiday days can still be 'carried over' from a previous year even if employees used up all of their entitlement (which is usually the case).

Before using this functionality please consider:

Carried-over days are not accrued as part of the current year's allowance. The system works on the basis that the carried-over day has already been accrued in the previous holiday year. Carried-over days are also used last - all existing available holiday is used up before them. If an employee is terminated before they have used up all of their holiday, the carried-over day will be paid out in full.

Option 2 - Job Title Settings

Job Title Settings

The number of weeks holiday is also recorded at Job Title level and can be overridden individually for each one.

More detail about how to update the default holiday entitlement can be found here - WFM HR: Creating a Job Title.

• To amend the entitlement within the Job Title, go to HR > Company Admin > Job Titles > select Job Title
• Select Edit Default Holidays
• Under 'Holiday Settings for Full Time and Part Time Staff', update the Basic Holiday Allowance to include the additional day
• Under 'Holiday Settings for Flexible Staff' update the Number Of Weeks Holiday Allowed For Flexible Employees entitlement from 5.6 to 5.8 to increase the holiday entitlement by 1 day (see Fig.1)

 The 5.6 in the default weeks field is the fraction of weeks allowance employees are entitled to each year. 28÷5 = 5.6.

28 is the minimum number of days holiday for a 5-day-a-week worker.

Fig.1 - Job Title default Holidays

• Select Save to confirm all changes and set up the Job Title