Managing Easter absences

Although some of us are looking forward to a long weekend, bank holidays are just normal working days for most businesses. And that means you can still encounter HR issues.

In fact, you might encounter more HR issues than normal and here’s why…

Holiday allowance confusion

Easter has a habit of moving around the calendar and this can cause you a real headache. As if you don’t keep an eye on the Easter dates, you could end up short-changing your team of their statutory minimum holiday allowance.

Your staff get a minimum of 28 days holiday each year, which most businesses split into 20 days holiday and eight bank holidays. But this can cause issues at Easter as the number of bank holidays in your financial year can change, depending on when Easter hits.

For example, Easter weekend landed in April in 2015, in March in 2016, and in April in 2017.

This meant that employees only got six bank holidays in the financial year April 2016 to March 2017. While employees got a generous 10 bank holidays for working between April 2015 and March 2016.

So what should you do about this?

Start by checking your employment contracts. If they state that employees get 20 days annual leave plus eight bank holidays, you’ll be in breach of your statutory requirement to give 28 days of holiday allowance every year. That’s unless you give employees additional days holiday on the years affected.  

It’s probably wise to look at the wording of your contracts to make sure it’s clear that employees get 28 days leave in total (including bank holidays).

But you’ve got plenty of time to do this, as Easter isn’t due to fall in March until 2024.

Handling parent holiday requests

Schools out. And that means you might be receiving more holiday requests that normal for Easter. Well, that’s according our BrightHR data…

It showed that holiday absence soared by 299% during the weeks either side of Easter weekend last year. That’s compared to the average holiday absence per day.

Getting bombarded with last-minute holiday requests? Read our guide to find out the guilt-free way of handing parent holiday requests.

The easiest way to manage absences over Easter

With all the above to contend with, you need a simple way to manage absences. And scraps of paper just won’t cut it…

Make your holiday management easier this Easter (and beyond) with BrightHR. Our smart software lets you approve holiday requests at the tap of a button. Plus, it calculates your employees’ holiday entitlements for you.

Try it for yourself. Get your free BrightHR demo today.