You’d be hard-pressed to find someone in a professional industry that doesn’t look forward to a bank holiday. But in a world where flexible working is redefining expectations from work, does the public holiday actually stand to undermine working policy that’s committed to inclusivity and equity for all workers?

With four of the UK’s eight bank holidays being tied to Christian religious festivals, then perhaps to a multi-faith workforce, the answer is yes. That’s why at Billion Dollar Boy, we’ve introduced a flexible bank holiday policy.

The policy allows our employees to exchange traditional Christian-based bank holidays for ones important in other religious or cultural calendars. In practice, this means Easter Monday could be swapped to celebrate Eid, or a day in Diwali, or another day of secular cultural significance.

Flexibility to choose bank holidays is not just an acknowledgement of the diversity of our workforce, but it’s also a natural evolution of our DE&I policy, and our company culture as a whole. It brings us closer to creating an environment that is as balanced, inclusive and equitable as it can be, for all members of staff.

People should not have to use an equivalent number of annual leave days to celebrate different religious holidays, and employers who disregard this logic cannot say that leave entitlement is entirely balanced across their company.

Statistically speaking, accommodating the wide spectrum of religious and cultural beliefs in the UK should be considered a fundamental component of any business’s DE&I policy, considering that a majority of the UK still identifies as being religious. According to the 2021 UK Census, 57 per cent of respondents in England and Wales said they are religious in some way, with 46.2 per cent identifying as Christian (a 13.1 percentage point drop since 2011).

Yet a disconnect between employer and employee remains, with the UK workforce largely agreeing businesses do not support religious beliefs in the workplace enough. According to the CIPD, “91 per cent of HR managers say their organisation promotes understanding of diversity and inclusion with regards to religion and belief to some or a great extent,” yet “only a quarter of workers agree this is the case.”

It’s a reminder that as HR professionals, we can do more. And flexible working is central to how we accommodate the needs of a multi-faith workforce. We’ve implemented several initiatives to help our team prioritise religious commitments.

For instance, for those fasting, we offer greater flexibility in working hours beyond the core workday of 10am-4pm, while those who need to work remotely for extended periods if they’re away for a religious festival can do so. Within the agency, we are also running cultural awareness and sensitivity sessions, and ensure visibility is raised through internal channels for different religious festivals and holy days.

There is a challenge to how information is posited, especially as not everyone is religious, and it’s important to consider that there are issues around intersectionality that have to be approached with sensitivity.

It also has to be communicated with an acceptance that we’re all on our own journeys of education and understanding. Regardless of organisational hierarchy, transparency and humility is best practised in an environment that has been built on trust and openness.

The duty of care we owe to all our staff obviously has a positive impact on the business, and this is something that has been well documented in recent years. Research by DocuSign shows that four in five organisations believe that “flexible working arrangements will be critical to their future success”, while it also shows that 75 per cent of businesses say it offers them “a competitive advantage” in an increasingly squeezed labour market.

For context, the UK’s advertising industry is still keenly feeling the effects of a talent shortage in a post-pandemic climate. A 2022 industry survey shows talent retention stands at just 42.2 per cent for UK agencies – in line with the industry’s global average – and slightly below the overall national average.

Any measures companies can take to create environments that place the wellbeing of its staff first, should surely be encouraged. In fact, the same survey cites “key training structures” as a key contributor to poor retention rates among UK agencies, which in its broadest sense includes a lack of material that contributes to personal education and wellbeing.

This is something we’ve paid particular attention to over the past years as our agency has grown. Thankfully, we have an employee retention rate of 70 per cent for the last year, far in excess of the industry average of 42%. We’d like to think this has contributed towards our reputation as one of the UK industry’s more progressive creative agencies. For us at least, taking the big topics and breaking them down into smaller questions – like whether our leave policy is truly reflective of inclusive workplace policy – is revealing helpful answers.