WFM UK: Queen's Jubilee Additional Bank Holiday

Overview

On 6th February this year Her Majesty The Queen will become the first British Monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years of service. To mark this occasion there will be an additional bank holiday in June.

• An additional bank holiday will be added on Thursday 2nd June
• The late May bank holiday will be moved from Monday 30th May to Friday 3rd June

In 2022 there will be 9 bank holidays in total, and this additional one will effectively create a four-day 'weekend'.

This article will show how to add the additional bank holiday 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 with a legal team if there is any uncertainty over whether employees should be given, or be paid for, the 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 Global Setting and/or the Job Title settings

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. 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).

Global Setting

A Global Setting can be used to include any additional payments that are in the current pay run within the additional holiday pay calculation.

• Go to HR > Administration > Global Settings > Edit Default Holiday Settings
• Select Holiday Calculations
• Under the 'Flexible Staff' section, the setting is titled Set default number of weeks flexible holiday entitlement
• To increase the holiday entitlement by 1 day, change the entitlement from 5.6 to 5.8 (see Fig.1)

Fig.1 - Holiday entitlement calculation - classic UI

Fig.2 - Holiday entitlement calculation - new UI

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.

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 (seeFig.3).

Fig 3. Job Title default Holidays classic UI

Fig 4. Job Title default Holidays New UI

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