The next step

Birthdays

[Policy]

Here, have a day’s paid birthday leave!

Happy birthday!

Granting an employee a day off for their birthday - which is commonly known as “birthday leave” - is an American concept. However, it’s becoming more popular in the UK, with employers such as Dunelm, KPMG and Virgin Media all offering their staff birthday leave.

If you want to offer your staff this perk, you’ll need to have some clear policy rules in place. So, what should you do here and what else must you bear in mind?

Eligibility criteria

Your starting point will be to set the eligibility criteria for birthday leave and this will depend on your business. For most employers, there are three main issues to think about here, namely:

• will your employees accrue the right to birthday leave from the start of their employment or must they have a minimum period of service before they qualify, e.g. one year?
• will your part timers will get a full day off for their birthday or a pro rata entitlement according to the hours that they work (you may decide to go with the former as it can be difficult to pro rata entitlements)?; and
• will your employees who are on sick leave on their birthday still qualify for a day off?

Off sick

Where an employee is sick, you can remove their right to the additional day off because it doesn’t form part of their statutory entitlement, but you must take care not to inadvertently discriminate against employees who are or may be disabled.

A clear policy

Having determined your eligibility criteria, you’ll need to implement a birthdays policy - you can use ours as your starting point (see The next step ). Your policy should state that:

• an employee is allowed to take one day off work each year as paid birthday leave and this doesn’t form part of their normal annual leave entitlement
• an employee must have notified their line manager in advance of the date of their birthday
• where the employee’s birthday falls at the weekend, or on a bank holiday, they can take off the day immediately before or after their birthday as agreed in advance with their line manager
• you may postpone the employee’s day off for their birthday to meet your operational requirements and maintain adequate staffing levels; and
• the employee can request to move their extra day off to another day, but you have the absolute final say on whether this is agreed
• the extra day off can’t be carried forward into a new holiday year; and
• the employee has no right to be paid in lieu if the extra day off is not taken.

Tip. Employees who are on maternity, paternity and adoption leave are entitled to receive the same terms and conditions of employment that would have been applicable had they not been absent (except for remuneration). Thus, they should still accrue an extra day off for their birthday and take it on their return.

For a birthdays policy, visit https://tips-and-advice.co.uk , Download Zone, year 25, issue 09.