Holidays
This doc summarises co-op policy around holiday entitlement, the Christmas shutdown period, how to schedule holidays, our holiday process, and holiday rollover.
Holiday entitlement
The standard holiday year runs from 1 April to 31 March. Your holiday accrues on a daily basis.
All staff are entitled to paid leave on:
- Statutory holiday entitlement based on days worked per week.
- Plus 3 days public holiday
This comes out to:
| Days worked per week | Annual entitlement |
|---|---|
| 5 | 31 |
| 4 | 25.5 |
| 3 | 20 |
If you have a different working week pattern, you can use the Holiday / pay calculator to work out your entitlement under this policy.
Co-op winter shutdown
Three days of your leave entitlement must be taken in the period between 25th December and 1st January, when Common Knowledge closes.
We normally close on the 23rd of December and return to the office on the 3rd of January, but this depends on where weekends fall.
Scheduling holiday
The longer the holiday, the sooner in advance you should mention it
As a guideline:
- 1 day: 1 week
- 1 week: 1 month
- 4 weeks: 4 months
Let people know on Twist
When you have ideas or plans about time off, let the team know so we can discuss and plan around it.
Ideally summarise your plans in the Availability thread on Twist.
Record your leave in BrightPay and Google Calendar
How to record leave
We use Productive as the source of truth for logging any type of leave. This means we have one place where we can quickly view availability across the coop’ different types of workers.
Any leave entered in Productive will automatically sync to the individual’s Google Calendar. For this to work, each person should set up the Google Calendar sync in Productive. It’s quick to do:
- In Productive, go to Settings > App Marketplace
- Add the Google Calendar integration > Connect it to your email
- Toggle on Turn on status sync to create your absence events in Google Calendar. Make sure to select all types of leave.
Employees also need to log their leave in BrightPay. The Operations person will check that employees’ BrightPay record aligns with Productive when they process payroll payments on the last Wednesday of the month. Individuals can log leave in BrightPay via the instructions below:
- Login to BrightPay:
- Click the
Add Leavebutton below the calendar: - Fill out the form:
- Another member will approve the days!
- Ensures accurate / precise data entry.
- Builds awareness of availability between team mates.
Going on holiday
- On the last day before you head off, check in with 'critical concerns' meeting to relieve you enough that you can take your mind off work and not dread the return date.
- Right before you finish work, leave the Signal group so that you're not mindlessly checking in on it. We re-add you when you're back.
- When you're back, we'll do a debrief on anything that's happened — if it coincides with a planning or a retro, we can feed two birds with one scone.
Unused holidays
A maximum number of 10 days may be carried forward to the following holiday year, with the co-op’s written permission. It must be used within 2 months of the new year.
If you leave the co-operative with some holiday entitlement not taken in the current holiday year, you will be paid on your last day of employment a sum representing pay for the number of holidays accrued but not taken.