Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR, the HR blog written for and by members of Human Resources UK.
A final reminder, don’t forget next week’s networking events! http://bit.ly/HKjYZl
Discuss HR is nothing but apt and once again one of our writers pens a very appropriate post. Our resident HR Director Sheena McLullich returns to discuss the forthcoming Bank Holiday and the relevance it has to HR professionals. (Ed Scrivener)
Bank Holiday
Yippee! Another Bank Holiday coming up this weekend. Another 4 day working week and there’s yet another long weekend to look forward to early next month!
This is the time of year that one CEO I worked with always referred to as the ‘silly season’. A time of year when you can’t count on anyone being in the office when you need them because lots of people take additional time off around the plethora of Bank Holidays. His view was that you were as well to write off the months of April and May because nothing ever got done.
Perhaps it’s thinking like this that’s behind proposals to move the current May Day holiday to later in the year, October being a popular suggestion. Apparently it’s got something to do with Trafalgar Day on 21st October – no, I must admit that I didn’t know that! I also didn’t know that the system of bank holidays in the UK dates back to 1871 when the Bank Holidays Act was first introduced. Prior to its introduction, the Bank of England recognised no fewer than 33 different saints’ days and religious holidays. The Act was later repealed and replaced by the Banking & Financial Dealings Act, 1971 which currently regulates Bank Holidays in the UK although several other Bank Holidays have been added since the Act was first passed.
Generally the UK is considered to have one of the lowest allocations of Bank Holidays in Europe if not the world, with only Mexico having fewer (7 - just to prove I’ve done my research!). Compare that to Cyprus (with 15), Spain (14) and even the USA with 10 and you can see why the argument may be for more Bank Holidays rather than moving the existing ones around.
When I first moved down to England from Scotland some 10 years or more ago, I found the whole concept of Bank Holidays a strange and confusing one. On the first Easter Sunday that I spent in England, I was astounded to discover that the shops were closed – Easter is not considered as a holiday north of the border. Scotland enjoys a completely different system with Public Holidays determined by local authorities. There are Bank Holidays - Christmas, New Year (two!!) and so on but there are also local holidays unique to each city, town and (sometimes) village. Bank Holidays are not as widely recognised in Scotland as they are in England and Scottish banks actually follow the English holiday system. This can mean that on a ‘bank holiday’ in Scotland, the banks are open for business – confusing to say the least!
I can remember several occasions when I had a day off for a public holiday because I worked in a particular city but my kids, who attended school in a different town, didn’t. It led to some scheduling and childcare nightmares!
However, it’s not all confusion and gloom – the UK offers a greater statutory holiday entitlement than many other countries. Employees here, as you well know, are entitled to at least 28 days holiday per year whereas in Cyprus it’s 20, Spain 22 and in the USA there is no statutory entitlement to holidays at all.
So, why did I spend a couple of hours researching this on the Internet? (thanks by the way, to the TUC, Mercer Consulting, Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and Wikipedia!) More importantly, why should we as HR professionals care about any of this? Well, lots of other research has shown that even in these straitened economic times, employees value a healthy work/life balance. Holidays are an essential component of this and I’m sure that many of us are really looking forward to our forthcoming shorter working week!
What do you think? Should we have more or fewer Bank Holidays? Does the benefit of having a happier workforce who enjoy more time off work outweigh the negative impact on productivity and attendance?
About the author
Sheena began her career in Training & Development before moving to a generalist HR position in 1998. Since then she has held senior HR roles for several SMEs in a wide range of industries. A Fellow of the CIPD and Member of the US SHRM, she has a keen interest in Employee Development, specifically in coaching and supporting managers to enable them to get the best from their people. She was appointed as Director of People for SPA Future Thinking in September 2011.
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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK. Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 10th May when we will welcome our latest guest writer Sharon Clews.
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