As an HR Manager, responsible for enough tasks to keep you occupied for life, you surely love when you can simplify and streamline your processes. Keeping up to date with the Bank Holidays in the UK is one way to correctly ensure you are informing your employees of their paid vacation days.
Manage your year even better!
If you have more than a few employees, manual management of vacation and time off requests can become complicated. Not to mention it can cost you a substantial amount of time, energy, and most importantly, money! If we just look at the cost required to manage vacations manually, you’re looking to spend around 6-8 pounds per month/employee. On the other hand, with Factorial, you can spend as little as 3 pounds a month to automate the process!
In the UK despite having some general national Holidays, Bank Holidays in the UK vary from one country to another. 6 of those Bank Holidays are nationwide, 2 only take place in England and Wales, 3 in Scotland and 4 in Northern Ireland. So depending on where your offices are located, your employees will be entitled to a different number of free days. In this post, we’ll focus just on the bank holidays in England and Wales!
English Bank Holidays
The following holidays apply both to England, and the Bank Holidays 2022 Wales has.
January:
- Jan 3rd, New Year’s Day (substitute day)
April:
- Apr 15th, Good Friday
- Apr 18th, Easter Monday
May:
- May 2nd, Early May Bank Holiday (Victory Day)
June:
- June 2nd, Spring Bank Holiday
- June 3rd, Platinum Jubilee Bank Holiday
August:
- Aug 29th, August Bank Holiday
December:
- Dec 26th, Christmas Day
- Dec 27th, Christmas Day (substitute day)
Special Holidays 2022
Easter Monday 2022 is a Public Holidays England celebrates, just as most places throughout Europe. In the UK, Scotland is the only one of the four countries that don’t observe this bank holiday. Easter Monday rarely happens on the same day from one year to the next. The reason being is that it is calculated from the paschal full moon. Joined with Good Friday, with Easter Monday, there forms a four-day-long weekend. Many people use this as a time to spend with family or friends or on a trip.
There are many different traditions around the Easter season, some of which include: egg rolling competitions; Easter bonnet parades; Morris dancing fairs and many more.
In 2022 we’ll also enjoy an extra bank holiday due to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, which will fall on Friday, the 3rd of June! This will provide us with a long bank holiday weekend to honour the Queen’s special anniversary.
In England and Wales, the August Bank Holiday takes place on the last Monday of August. Originally the Summer Bank Holiday was created so people could “spend the day playing and attending cricket” which seems legit for the UK. But, nowadays, many use this day as one last weekend with the family all together before the start of the new school year. Oftentimes in England, the August Bank Holiday also signifies the end of the summer season. For London residents, this is marked by a three-day-long Notting Hill Carnival.
2022 Holidays in the UK – Automate Your Time-off Requests
At Factorial we update our Welsh & English Bank Holidays calendar every year to be up to date with the latest public holidays. When you sign up to Factorial’s HR system, you have access to an up-to-date calendar at all times. This will prevent you from having to worry about making an error when importing public holidays manually. You can even customise your own company days off, manage employee time-off requests, and more!
