Birthday leave: a must or a perk?

Birthday leave is the latest perk businesses are considering offering their employees in an effort to attract and retain talent. It’s not compulsory, but employers in large and small businesses around the world are considering offering this non-statutory benefit to look more attractive to potential employees and retain existing ones with this good-will gesture. If you are considering adding it as a perk in your business, you might have a lot of questions: should you get into the spirit of celebration by allowing employees to take off a day from work by using birthday leave? Do people want their birthdays celebrated? And if you do, is it classified as part of their annual leave or a separate perk? In this blog we unpack everything you need to know about birthday leave, and how to ensure a suitable policy if you decide to go for it.

What is birthday leave? 

Birthday leave is a policy that allows employees to take a day off from work to celebrate their birthday. As a trend, it is often presented as a perk that is commonly seen amongst startups and small businesses especially. Although it is widely practised and embraced, the onus is on the business to decide whether or not to provide it. And how to package it. The intent of birthday leave is to improve the businesses compensation package, as offering additional days of leave as work perks can improve the company’s attractiveness to potential talent. Is birthday leave mandatory, and are employers legally required to offer it?

The short answer is no. Birthday leave is a non-statutory requirement so businesses are not legally obliged to provide it. Rather, many businesses that have the resources choose to offer it as a perk and as a way to celebrate their team, and gain the eyes of job seekers.

[H2] Is birthday leave paid? In the UK, birthday leave isn’t a statutory entitlement, so whether it’s paid depends on the employer’s policy. Some UK companies offer paid birthday leave as part of their benefits package to boost morale and employee satisfaction, treating it as a paid day off. Others may provide it as an unpaid leave option, or not at all.

Since it’s an optional benefit, the terms (paid or unpaid) are usually set out in the company’s employment contracts.

[H2] What are the benefits of offering birthday leave to your employees?

Everybody loves an extra day off work. You get to rest, celebrate your day and come back motivated and productive. A gesture of goodwill: birthday leave as a paid day off is a great way to show your team that you care. Wellbeing and happiness: an extra day’s annual leave off can only mean one thing – rest for your team to be present on their special day so that they can come back to work more productively. Positive company culture and employee engagement: Birthday leave contributes to positive company culture by fostering a sense of appreciation. Compensation offers: As mentioned before, offering additional leave can incentivise job seekers to apply for jobs. In cases where companies can not offer monetary incentives in their compensation packages, businesses can instead offer benefits that cater to work-life balance.

Are there any downsides to offering birthday leave?

Although a birthday leave policy can help you prevent these downsides from happening, it is still useful to consider these cons. A few of these largely depend on the size of your business and resources available. Operational challenges: if you have a small business and limited staff, granting birthday leave for several employees who have their birthday around the same time may cause workflow blockage. Date complications: If your employees’ birthday falls on the weekend, you will have to look into giving them the next working day off.

Tips for companies introducing a birthday leave policy

You guessed it folks. The easiest – and quickest – way to introduce a birthday leave policy is through a HRIS system such as Employment Hero. Not only does our platform make it easy to distribute to all your employees, it also makes it easier to track who has signed it, and who still needs to. Did we mention our end-to-end solution can help you with onboarding, offboarding and everything in-between such as keeping your employees engaged? The software scales with your business, and makes your life as an owner or manager easier.

Examples of companies that have implemented a birthday leave policy

Osborne

UK based family-owned construction business Osborne provides birthday leave for their staff as part of their benefits package. They list it separately from annual leave and have over 550 employees.

Cisco

NASDAQ listed company Cisco has over 100,000 employees and proudly celebrates birthdays by what they call ‘the Cisco way’. It’s available to all their employees regardless of their location around the world. To help their employees celebrate, team members get to take a day off their birthday as an extra day off. Some locations have a tradition where, if the team member decides to work, they get their office fully decked with birthday celebrations including balloons, confetti and swag. Not a bad way to celebrate.

PwC

PricewaterhouseCoopers provides birthday leave as an extra day off as part of their flex+ flexible work arrangement policy. Listed as a perk for joining their Malaysian region offices, team members can take birthday leave as an additional day off instead of using their annual leave.

How else can you celebrate employee birthdays in a meaningful way?

Being flexible is key in helping your employee celebrate their special day, as is making sure they can easily book it off and having a clear birthday leave policy. Below, we unpack what this looks like in detail.

Have a flexible birthday leave policy in place

Depending on your business resources, you can choose to provide some flexibility to your employee by allowing them to take their birthday leave within seven days of their birthday. If you do, you may want to have a clear policy in place that outlines how much notice they need to give, who they need to communicate to do so and what happens if they don’t use it e.g. clarifying if they may not carry it forward.

Reward and recognition programme

At Employment Hero we’re proud of our reward and recognition programme that provides all our employees celebrating their birthday with Hero Points that they can use to get a little something for themselves in the marketplace accessible from our platform. Being asynchronous, we love doing a little shout out – and finding an all important giphy to celebrate our colleague’s special day.

Seamless leave management

Help your employees book their time off with ease by using our self-serving leave management system. It cuts back half the admin time, not to mention all those back and forth emails that normally happen just for a day off. It also creates visibility for the team so they know who is off when, without that hassle.

Celebrating employees is easy with Employment Hero

Whether it’s for birthday celebrations, or vacation dates, stay on top of who is off when with Employment Hero’s self serving leave management system. It creates visibility seamlessly for you across the business and helps your team stay organised with their workflow management so you don’t have to worry about anything going amiss when someone takes time off for their special day.