How to calculate and manage annual leave for your employees

Annual leave is important to your employees. Providing them with paid time off to relax, unwind, and spend some time away from work.

While they can choose how to spend their time off, your job is to ensure that their entitlements are accurately calculated. Managing the entire annual leave process in the most efficient way. Helping to avoid any serious grievances.  

Read on to find out how to calculate and manage annual leave for your employees. And discover how a staff holiday planner can effectively streamline this entire process.

Statutory annual leave entitlements in the UK

In the UK there are statutory annual leave entitlements that apply to almost all types of workers.

As an employer it’s your legal responsibility to grant at least 5.6 weeks of paid time off to your employees. For employees working 5 days a week this equates to 28 days. However, for staff on part-time contracts, irregular hours, or temporary workers, there’s a few more calculations to be done.

How to calculate annual leave allowances

If an employee works the standard 5-day week they are simply entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday. However, if a part-time employee works 3 days per week for example, they will be entitled to a proportionate amount of leave.

The easiest way to calculate this is to multiply the number of days they work each week by 5.6.

For example:

If Penny works 3 days per week, her annual leave entitlement is 3 x 5.6 = 16.8 days of annual leave.

Annual leave for different types of employees

Statutory annual leave entitlements apply to almost all types of workers, this includes:

• Agency workers/temporary staff

• Workers on irregular hours throughout the year

• New starters

• Workers who only work at certain periods of the year (part-year)

With various types of employment and a range of working shift patterns, it may not be so simple to calculate annual leave allowances for all your staff.

However, with BrightHR you don’t have to do these calculations yourself. Our HR software and its handy staff holiday planner will calculate and refresh your team’s annual leave allowances for you. Making it easier than ever to ensure you stay legally compliant and maintain a happy workforce.

Leave management in the workplace

Leave management is one of the biggest struggles facing managers and HR departments. From tracking leave requests to calculating accurate allowances, leave management requires the right training and understanding to implement an efficient process that benefits everyone across the business.

Handling annual leave requests

One of the most difficult aspects of managing employee annual leave is dealing with multiple requests for the same dates. This is especially common during holidays like Christmas and in summer.

Not every employee is going to get the holiday dates they want — which is why you need to treat all requests fairly and consistently. If you have a written policy for leave requests, you can manage staff disappointment by clearly explaining the reasons why.

Your policy might:

• Set a minimum notice period for requesting leave

• Set fair rules for deciding who gets to take double-requested dates. You might use a first-come-first-served basis, or at Christmas consider who got to take time off the previous year

• Use a holiday requests calendar in the workplace, to keep the process transparent

If the task of writing your own company annual leave policy seems daunting to you, do not worry. BrightBase has been created to offer business owners and managers a handy online tool to access templates, guides and documents for the essential HR documents you may need. Including a template for an annual leave policy.

Calculate and manage annual leave with one digital tool

To tackle the challenges of calculating and managing annual leave allowances, a software solution is the ideal choice for your business.

IT-based solutions automate your annual leave processes. Completing the leave entitlement calculations for you and managing everything in one easy-to-use system.

The BrightHR staff holiday planner has been built to do all this and more! Offering businesses a comprehensive leave management system that works in a wide range of industries.  

Built-in features of our staff holiday planner include:

• Automatic annual leave calculations so you can ditch the calculator

• A single view of your staff calendar to see who’s in and who’s out

• Instant alerts of clashes so you can avoid office conflicts over holiday requests

• An auto-refresh of leave allowances with each new year to save you time

• Staff holiday allowance balances so you can see who is taking enough time off and reduce burnout in the workplace

• Integration with our HR app for easy access across your mobile devices

With all this and more, our staff holiday planner is guaranteed to save you time and money! To see our holiday management software in action, book a free demo with a member of our team.