Member Article

Changes to holiday entitlement

By Colin Grimston of Business Link

As we’re in the midst of the summer season, holidays are at the forefront of many employees’ and business owners’ minds. While we all value the importance of annual leave as it is great for boosting business productivity and staff morale, it can also be a testing time for businesses to manage workloads.

At present, it is legal for firms to include bank holidays as part of their employees’ statutory 20-day annual leave, but from 1 October this year it will only be legal to include four bank holiday days, and by April 2009 the right to include them will be removed altogether.

The region’s businesses need to decide whether to increase all workers’ entitlement to 28 days from 1 October, or to calculate the precise minimum legal entitlement taking into account the two-stage introduction of the additional rights. Under the reforms, businesses will still be able to offer payment in lieu of the additional holiday entitlements, but only until April 2009. After that date, the full entitlement must be offered.

To help the region’s businesses prepare ahead of regulation changes like these, the Business Link website includes a range of handy, user-friendly tools that can be accessed at the touch of a button, so you don’t even have to pick up the phone or leave the comfort of your home or office.

To help North East businesses comply with the new holiday regulation changes, we’ve launched a new online called ‘calulate your employees holiday entitlement’. This interactive tool uses a short questionnaire to identify the how the changes in holiday entitlement may affect their employees and their business.

This tool is just one of the features on the website’s newly enhanced employment section, which also includes other tools, advice and guides on human resources topics from training and skills, pensions and recruitment as well as a broad range of areas of business support. The website enables you to access key information at the touch of a button 24 hours a day, seven days a week, however if you would like if you would like to discuss this with one of our team we’re always at end of the phone.

For further information, visit www.businesslinknortheast.co.uk or call 0845 600 9 006.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .