Recently in the headlines was news that the Government wants to make changes to the Holidays Act.
What is being proposed is aimed at simplifying the processing of leave so that everyone can understand the rules and follow them.
The changes signalled include:
- pro-rating sick leave so that it is proportional to how much an employee works rather than each employee getting the same whether they work full time or part time;
- moving to an accrual system so that leave accumulates as you work rather than clocking in on a particular anniversary date;
- simpler methods for calculating leave used so that pay systems don’t have to access data about daily hours of work;
- clarify and simplifying concepts in the current legislation that are difficult to understand.
Concerns have been raised for part-time employees who are likely to receive less sick leave under the proposal. But what hasn’t been raised is that employers have been well aware of the disproportionate cost of part time employee leave entitlements since the sick leave entitlement was changed to 10 days per annum.
Many will welcome the issue being resolved more transparently than is possible at present.
The rebalancing the Government has signalled could actually make it more financially attractive for businesses to employ part time workers so watch this space.
Link here