In 2022, there will be an extra bank holiday on Friday 3rd June to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. This will result in a four-day bank holiday weekend, as the regular May Bank Holiday Weekend date has moved to be on Thursday 2nd June.
This extra bank holiday applies in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It’s great that lots of people in Britain will get an extra day off work in celebration, but have you considered the practicalities of how this extra bank holiday may affect your business operations - and if your employees are entitled to the extra bank holiday?
Make sure your business is ready for the extra bank holiday and prepares effectively for bank holidays in line with your staff's entitlement to them with these 5 tips:
Businesses don’t have to offer their employees bank holidays by law (unless they are included within the employees’ statutory entitlement), but it can often be a cultural expectation that workers get these days off. However, some industries require people to work on bank holidays.
However you choose to approach bank holidays, make sure this is clear within your annual leave policies (for example, within your staff handbook). As a helpful communication, you could even send out a message about the extra bank holiday to remind your staff of what your policy is (and note that this could be different depending on if they are full time or part time employees).
A full-time employee is entitled to 28 days of annual leave per annum; the traditional 8 bank holidays can be included within this statutory entitlement, or they can be offered in addition to it (so up to a total of 36 days of annual leave, not including any added company annual leave).
It’s important to consider this when figuring out entitlement to the extra bank holiday; will this result in your full-time employees having 29 days off or up to 37? Of course, this is calculated pro rata for employees working less than full time, which we’ll cover in a bit more detail below.
The wording within an employee’s contract will be telling as to whether they are entitled to the extra bank holiday or not in 2022. The HR Dept have some useful tips over on their blog about how your policy is worded, giving the following examples:
You may still want to give employees the extra bank holiday, even if you’re not contractually obliged to offer it. It’s best to seek professional advice on the wording within your contracts.
As with all bank holiday calculations, make sure you address the potential of unfairly treating some of your part-time employees, lest you fall afoul of the Part Time Worker Regulations 2000.
For instance, most bank holidays fall on a Monday. So, a part-time worker who happened to work on Mondays would be treated more favourably than a part-time worker who didn’t work Mondays if they can take bank holidays and their other part-time colleagues cannot. Giving part-time workers a pro rata entitlement to bank holidays is an effective way to address this.
The Spring bank Holiday and Platinum Jubilee bank holiday fall on a Thursday and Friday, respectively. So make sure any part-time employees who happen to not work on a Thursday and/or Friday are receiving a fair amount of time off if part-time employees who do work a Thursday/Friday are getting those bank holidays.
Learn more: Bank holiday entitlement for part time workers
It’s likely that employees will want to make the most of the two bank holidays in a row and perhaps even take more time off around these bank holidays, so expect an influx of holiday requests!
It’s best to make sure employees understand the rules around taking annual leave within the company so people aren’t disappointed when there are holiday request clashes with other staff who have already requested to take time off.
Plan for staff holidays more efficiently and effectively with a holiday management system to review requests and oversee remaining entitlements.
If you have a myhrtoolkit HR software account, it is easy to account for the extra bank holiday in 2022. Read our guide on adding extra bank holidays in myhrtoolkit to find out more about adding or removing extra bank holidays from employee entitlements.