annual holidays – employees with an irregular or changing work pattern

Some employees have an irregular or changing work pattern, either because they move frequently between full and part-time work, or because they have variable work patterns.

The principle of four weeks annual holidays still applies to these employees. Where these employees work for more than 12-months, they should receive four weeks annual holidays. Because of the irregularity of these employee's working patterns it is often easiest to base the annual holidays on the amount of work done by the employee over each 12-month period.

The method currently used in most payroll systems to provide these employees with four weeks annual holidays is to express the accruing entitlement in hours, with a holiday entitlement of 4/52 of an hour accruing for each hour worked.

Where records are kept manually it is important that:

• there is an accurate wage and time record
• employees' holiday and leave records are correctly completed.

These records can help to accurately calculate the ordinary weekly pay and average weekly earnings for the purposes of assessing an employee's annual holiday pay. The higher of these figures is then used - see the fact sheet titled Annual holidays – calculating “ordinary weekly pay” and “average weekly earnings”. (http://www.ers.dol.govt.nz/holidays_act_2003/calculate_pay.html)

Where the entitlements to annual holidays for these employees are expressed in hours, it would generally be appropriate to calculate hourly rates for holiday pay based on ordinary weekly pay and average weekly pay as well.
The employee and employer will also need to agree to what portion of a week is being taken as annual holidays.

Examples of wage and time records, and of holiday and leave records, are available from the Department of Labour freephone on 0800 20 90 20 during normal business hours and they can be downloaded from http://www.ers.dol.govt.nz/holidays_act_2003/records.html