Q: We are after a case example or examples on what the value of the minimum 4 weeks annual leave should be if an employee changed their working pattern in the previous year.

We think it should be based on the value of the working week at the time but are struggling to find a case example to back this up.

Our payroll system simply converts the ‘accrual’ to be the entitlement (less any leave taken in advance). It’s all done in hours and days.

A: Are you talking about time or money here?

The value of a week of annual holiday entitlement is always the greater of AWE and OWP (Section 21 Holidays Act). The week (time ) is an agreed term so when a week changes (by agreement) the new week is the week from that point and any entitlement earned prior gets converted to the new agreed week.

The value is still determined by the greater of AWE and OWP and that can mean that AWE may inflate the rate as it looks back 52 weeks.

Q: We are talking about time. As an example:

• An employee started their entitlement year working 40 hours over 5 days.
• Half way through the year they changed to 24 hours over 3 days.
• Two months later they changed to 30 hours over 4 days.
• A couple of weeks before their anniversary they returned to 40 hours over 5 days.

The system we use gave this employee 17.45 days, 139.59 hours on their anniversary. Is this correct?

Another example:

• An employee was working 32 hours over 4 days.
• They went on parental leave and returned just before their anniversary to do 8 hours over 1 day.

The system gave them 15.8 days, 126.42 hours. Is this correct?

A: The key thing you must do is identify what entitlement the employee had on the change to a new agreed week and do this each time they change to a different agreed week.

Every time the employee changes their week, any entitlement that had been earned at that time would need to change to the new week, so in the example below should have been converted three times from the original 40 hours over 5 days.  As a week is by agreement.

So what annual holiday entitlement did the employee have based on the 40 hours over 5 days when they agreed to the new week (24 hours over 3 days)?  You will need to do the conversion for each changed to determine if the system has provided the correct entitlement (minus and annual holiday taken) total when the employee changed back.

In your second example the same thing needs to be undertaken (what entitlement need they have on the change).