employment

[wendy bolton]

i have recently took someone on in employment who works 30Hrs a week but only term times how do i work out pro rata wages on this the wage is minnium wage and would they also be entitled to holiday pay and how do i work it out.hope some one can help

kind regards

wendy

[Buenchico]

(2-part post):

I'm not too sure where your problem comes from regarding wages. If someone works 30 hours in a week at the minimum wage, they should simply be paid 30 x minimum hourly rate for each of the weeks they work and not paid (with the exception of holidays, as stated below) for the other weeks.

Annual holiday entitlement is calculated based upon the number of days worked per week (not the number of hours). If your employee works 4 days per week, then (if they worked a full year) their holiday entitlement would be 4 x 4 days = 16 days. If they work 5 days per week their hoilday entitlement (for a full year's work) would be 4 x 5 days = 20 days. Since your employee only works term time these figures need to be revised pro rata. If 'term time' means the 39 weeks that pupils must attend school each year, this means that you need to calculate three quarters of the above figures. i.e. someone who works 4 days per week would be entitled to 12 days hoilday and someone who works 5 days per week would be entitled to 15 days holiday.

[Buenchico]

The (paid) holidays, above, include bank holidays and/or other times when your business is closed. This, of course, still means that (unless you close your business more often than most) you will have to give your employee some additional paid days off during term time to comply with the statutory holiday requirements. If you want to avoid doing this you can (subject to any existing contractual agreement) change the employee's 'theoretical' working year to 'term time plus the first week of the summer holidays'. You then give your employee bank holidays (and/or other closure days) off but also give them the first week of the summer holidays off (i.e. you pay them for that week). That paid week will then account for either 4 or 5 days (as appropriate) of the employee's holiday and restrict the number of term-time days for which you will be without their services. (However, because this way of doing things extends the 'theoretical' working year by one week, it also slightly extends the employee's holiday entitlement. To balance things up, it would be necessary to make a small additional payment equivalent to 2 hours 20 minutes pay which could be added to the pay for the week of holiday taken at the first week of the school summer holidays).

Chris