Annual leave rights for staff

Do you know what rights you and your staff member have when it comes to annual leave? The NHF/NBF serves up advice for beauty business owners…

Everyone who is employed in the UK is entitled to paid leave, whatever their role or the number of hours worked. It’s vital to know what the law says and to strongly encourage your salon employees to take all their annual leave.

Minimum entitlement

All employees are entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday. This works out as 28 days’ paid leave a year, including bank holidays, for an employee who works five days a week in your salon. This is worked out by multiplying five days by 5.6 weeks which gives 28 days holiday.

NBF Members benefit from free employment contracts and staff handbooks which include written policies on annual leave to help ensure you and your staff are clear about their entitlement.

The same type of calculation applies when working out how much paid leave a part-time worker is entitled to. For example, if someone works three days a week, the amount of paid leave is worked out by multiplying three days by 5.6 which works out as 16.8 days paid annual leave. Remember that annual leave entitlement must always be rounded up, not down. So, 16.8 days would become 17.

Bank holidays and annual leave

Bank holidays can be a bit confusing. Employers can choose to include bank holidays as part of an employee’s entitlement. It’s important to note that this does not mean your employees are automatically entitled to take bank holidays as paid leave.

In addition, you cannot ask employees to take annual leave on a day they are not normally contracted to work.