Which has better holiday entitlement - random or fixed roster?

[rudestuff]

I'm trying to understand the pros and cons of the different types of roster. Obviously with a fixed roster like 5-on/4-off you could take 5 days holiday and get 13 days off. But how does it work with Random rosters? Presumably by the time you get your roster it's too late to book holiday? And if you book months in advance, surely you'll be using up holiday days when they would have given you the day off anyway? (To get 13 days off you'd use 13 holiday days instead of 5)

[Dct_Mopas]

If on a random roster with Ezy, your leave is confirmed well in advance so you can book holidays. Also, leave will attract 'wrap days off' attached to either day of the leave booking. For example 5 days leave would give 2 days off both before and after, so 9 days off roster.

Might be similar elsewhere,

[Denti]

We only have random rosters with up to five days of duty in a row. Vacation days are based on a week of 7 days of work, which means that i have to take 7 days of vacation for 7 days. And that is the shortest possible vacation period anyway. However, for any vacation period of seven days or more we do get one fixed off day before and after the vacation, out of the normal monthly off days (11 on average). That is one reason why we get 42 days of vacation a year, not the usual 30 our office staff (with 5 days of work per week) gets.

Since we can request 4 days off work each month a cleverly planned vacation of 7 days can net up to 17 days off work.

[EAM]

I guess with most companies you need to take 14 days leave to get 14 days off, even on a fixed roster, no matter if you have off days in between.
If on a flex roster and you take the first 2 weeks of the month leave, you won't get 10 day off in the remaining 2 weeks. With the fixed roster is the same.
The advantage on a fixed roster is, you can plan your live.

[RAT 5]

Obviously with a fixed roster like 5-on/4-off you could take 5 days holiday and get 13 days off.

I once worked on this type roster, and it is not always the case. If you worked day 1-4 as OFF, day 5-9 ON, and 10-13 OFF then you could take that block of 13 as holiday with 5 days holiday. Now you work 1-5 ON, 6-9 OFF, 10-14 ON you now needed 10days holiday for 14 days off. It was a real pain and they gave no flexibility. They would not change the pattern. For those who wanted to know their days OFF 6 months in advance this was necessary, but there was a penalty. For those who didn't care, they had no choice.
What I did find with a random roster, in a sympathetic airline, was it was easy to request 1-2 days off for special events; in the rigid roster system they did not allow this; no flexibility. Real pain the bum and in 21st century 24/7 working one needs a flexible sympathetic attitude.

[ReallyAnnoyed]

In ezy, your days off are your days off. So, if you take 5 leave days in your 5/3/5/4 pattern, you will get 12 days off. One more if on the 5/4 roster of Italy. In the UK, you get 25 leave days. In Germany, you get 30, so 6 x 12 days off if you take them in blocks of 5 (outside of reserve).


You can have fixed pattern with some of the part time options as well, but the waiting lists for part time is long in many bases.

[wiggy]

Not sure if the OP is refering to a specific airline, but FWIW

I guess with most companies you need to take 14 days leave to get 14 days off,

Is certainly the way it works for full timers with us - we're on a form of "random" rosters (i.e. no fixed pattern).

if you book months in advance, surely you'll be using up holiday days when they would have given you the day off anyway?

In our case yup, correct.....you just have to suck it up.

How it works:

6-9 months ahead bid for leave...( 7 or 14 day block of guaranteed days off ).

Get leave bid result about a month later, only then can you book holidays and if you are sensible only book/pay for a holiday within those guaranteed days off.

Any other days around the leave block are an unknown until (relatively) the last minute - you might need to bid to work in them to create a valid roster, or the company might in some circumstances assign work into days around leave.