No one left out! Are ‘floating holidays’ the most inclusive leave policy?

Feliz Navidad! Eid Mubarak! Chag Pesach sameach! Happy Diwali!

These are all greetings that you might expect to hear thrown around at work these days, with the modern, global workplace hosting employees from a wide range of ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds. This is good news for diversity, with all the benefits that it brings, but it can be tricky when it comes to paid leave for public holidays.

You can’t recognise every holiday from every culture or faith with paid leave. If you did, you’d have barely any working days left! But whichever holiday calendar you pick, someone won’t be happy. So what can you do?

Enter the ‘floating holiday’.

Table of Contents

• What is floating holiday?
• What’s the difference between floating holiday and normal paid time off?
• Why are floating holidays important?
• The logistics
• Key takeaways

What is floating holiday?

No, it’s not a long weekend on a canal boat. Nor a two-week Caribbean cruise. The ‘floating’ aspect here is calendar, not water based. It’s essentially flexible time off, extra paid leave that people can use at a time that suits them. It came about as a way to allow all employees to take holiday in line with their cultural or religious observances, but in theory it can be used for anything. Maybe a family event or birthday.

What’s the difference between floating holiday and normal paid time off?

The key thing about floating holiday is its flexibility, designed to recognise both the diversity of the team and the importance of personal interests and needs. The floating holiday allows staff to align their paid leave with their personal preferences and cultural or family calendar.

But isn’t all holiday flexible? Actually, if you have set paid days off then no, it isn’t. If you don’t recognise Christian holidays, for example, then much of the ‘default’ paid time off in the UK is simply not relevant to you. Yet in many cases you have no choice but to take it. 

Floating holiday gives you the choice.

A company that is concerned about inclusivity might go one step further and implement a policy that prioritises leave requests for religious celebrations outside of the ‘typical’ or default holiday calendar for that country. In this case, the floating holiday can be used to mark out this kind of leave request and put it at the top of the pile. This would ensure that the right to paid time off to celebrate a religious or cultural holiday is enjoyed equally by all employees, regardless of faith or background, with no in-built privilege for the dominant or ‘state’ religion.

Why are floating holidays important?

Which public holidays you choose to recognise with paid leave by default – and which you do not – can affect people’s sense of belonging (or lack thereof), morale and engagement. These are critical to a good culture. Floating holidays are a more inclusive work practice that doesn’t assume religious or cultural conformity. This approach is much more in line with the multicultural workplaces we tend to see (and value) these days.

National public holidays rarely reflect the diversity of the populations they apply to. For example, in the UK, most national public holidays relate to Christian celebrations (eg Christmas and Easter), but less than half of the population identifies as Christian. What’s more, around 6–7% are Muslim, but there are no designated days off for Eid.

For some employees, a leave calendar with pre-set public holidays forces them to take leave at a time that has no religious or cultural significance to them. This in itself may not sound so bad. Time off is always a good thing, right? But if leave policy or availability means they cannot then be off at a time that is culturally significant for them, it starts to look pretty unfair.

The logistics

When it comes to logistics and policy, you have three main options in regard to paid leave:

• Set company-wide days off. This is set paid days off, for everyone, typically based on the national public holiday calendar. This is the simplest model, in terms of workforce management, but the most likely to create discontent and attract criticism. It’s unlikely to reflect the whole, even the majority, of your workforce (if it does, you might want to look at your diversity!).

• Hybrid model – set days off plus floating holiday. Staff have a set number of days they can take off, and can sub holidays they don’t celebrate for ones they do. For many companies, this added flexibility is the most balanced approach. In a diverse workforce, you can typically expect paid leave requests to be pretty well spread across the year, making cover easy.

• All floating holiday. This is the most flexible and so the most inclusive. It also comes with the most admin, but this is nothing a good leave calendar can’t sort. It’s also tricky if it makes financial sense for the company to close on certain days, due to lack of business or ability to work (eg, most places shut over Christmas in the UK) as you’ll lose more working days overall. You also might find that some people resent having to dip into their paid leave quota to take time off on what they feel are ‘standard’ holidays in that country.

Deciding whether a floating holiday policy is a good idea requires deep knowledge of the business, your workforce and your priorities. You can take a more or less formal route in terms of tracking leave and what it’s for, but trust and freedom tend to be appreciated. While you may have good intentions of helping people to celebrate religious holidays, consider whether it's necessary for them to have to justify their reasons for taking floating holiday.

If you do adopt a hybrid or fully floating holiday policy, you can use a faith festival calendar to support leave management. This will help you spot any pinch points or potentially busy periods for leave requests, based on the demographics of your staff. 

A helpful one is the Shap Calendar of Religious Festivals. It lists key calendar dates and provides information about the various festivals. This will help you understand any context around these celebrations (eg. fasting for Ramadan) that may affect a person at work and learn how to send good wishes at these times.

Key takeaways

We live and work in a globalised, multicultural world, yet our national holidays don’t reflect this. As a UK company, if you only give paid leave for Christian holidays as standard, people from different faiths and cultural backgrounds may feel left out or less valued.

You could expand your company-wide paid days off to include some major non-Christian holidays, such as the Lunar New Year, Yom Kippur, or Diwali. But in a global organisation striving for maximum inclusivity, this will still fall short—there will always be something or someone left out.

If you don’t want public holidays to become a sore point, consider a floating holiday leave policy. It can be in place or on top of set days off, but a hybrid model is a good place to start. This will allow you to recognise all kinds of holidays, and sends a powerful message: that you care about your staff’s traditions and cultures and want them to be able to celebrate these at relevant times.

Happy holidays!