Holiday entitlement can be difficult to calculate. There are so many variables to take into account; is the employee working full-time or part-time? Is she in a temporary position? Is the family giving the employee all bank holiday as paid of, or only the statutory entitlement? And last, but not least: what does the term pro rata actually mean?
Statutory Entitlement
Full-time
All employees in the UK are entitled by law to 4.8 weeks holiday per annum. For a full-time employee that is 24 paid days off per year, of which 4 weeks is standard leave and 0.8 (80% of the working week) is 4 of the bank holiday.
The entitlement to 4 bank holidays as paid days off is a new law, which was introduced in October 2007. Previously it was only those who actually worked for the bank who were legally entitled to the bank holidays as paid days off.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Many families have been giving their employees all bank holidays as paid days off well before the introduction of the new law, and if this is the case and they want to carry on doing that, the cleaner statutory entitlement will remain at the 4.8 weeks, plus the remaining 4 bank holidays as arranged with the family, Not 4.8 weeks plus 8 bank holidays.
Temporary and Part-time
What about if the employee is only working part-time? The calculation is simple. Multiply the number of days the housekeeper works by 4.8. If the family is happy to let the housekeeper have all bank holidays off, that's fine.
If the housekeeper is employed on a temporary basis, she is also entitled to holiday. The calculation of the holiday entitlement for a temp housekeeper in a full-time position is straight forward: divide 24 (the total number of days she would be entitled to if she was working the whole year) with 52 (the total number of weeks in a year). Then you simply multiply the answer with the number of weeks the housekeeper has been contracted to work for.
Example 1: Housekeeper A has been hired to work for family B 5 days per week for 24 weeks:
24 / 52 = 0.46 * 24 = 11.0
The holiday entitlement for Housekeeper A is 11.0 days.
On a part-time basis in a temporary position, the calculation is a little bit more complex. First, you need to establish the annual entitlement if she was working the whole year. You simply multiply the number of days she works per week by 4.8. Follow the steps as outlined in the calculation below.
Example 2: Cleaner C has been employed to work for family D for three days per week for 24 weeks:
4.8 * 3 = 14.4 / 52 = 0.276 * 24 = 6.6
Holiday entitlement for Cleaner C is 6.6 days.
Pro Rata
Pro rata is a word that pops up frequently whenever you're dealing with a part-time employee. Just like the salary will be calculated on a pro rata basis so will the holiday entitlement. Pro rata is Latin for "proportionally" or a "proportion of" and simply means that the part-timer's entitlement is calculated according to what proportion of a full-time job their hour.