The recognition of a public holiday is an important cultural marker – and a welcome break from the daily grind of work to spend time with family and friends.

In both Australia and New Zealand, significant dates on the Christian calendar make up a large chunk of public holidays on offer but there’s a raft of others, including the king’s birthday, and Matariki in New Zealand to mark the start of the new year in the Māori calendar. In Victoria, there’s even one to celebrate the AFL grand final.

But not all days hold the same significance to all people and one idea that is gaining momentum is encouraging employees to take public holidays on a date that suits them best.

Karen Kirton, founder and director of Amplify HR, says more and more businesses are approaching her with questions on the topic.

“People do want to take different days off, and we see that with NAIDOC Week, for example. There are people that want to take days off then. If they don't celebrate Easter or Australia Day, then why not swap those days for others that mean something to them?” she says.

So, how does it work and is it something that your business should be offering? We look at two companies that have policies in place to help their employees use public holidays to celebrate what is important to them.

Embedding it in the HR system

People feel empowered to celebrate days that are important to them, says Penny Rush, diversity, equity and inclusion manager at Aurecon, an engineering, design and advisory firm with employees in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. Aurecon offers employees the opportunity to swap selected public holidays outside of the shutdown period for a day of their choice.

“It is very straightforward. It’s a formal policy with formal process and is embedded into our leave options within our HR system,” says Rush.

“I think it's much more encouraging and people are much more likely to take it up if there's a specific process that they follow. Then they know that their team leader is likely to be very supportive and their peers will be supportive,” she adds.

The reasons behind the policy are driven by the multicultural makeup of the business, says Rush.

“It's in recognition of the multicultural workforce that we have. In Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, there are a lot of different faiths and cultures with different celebrations that don't come with a public holiday, that’s what it gets used for – cultural celebrations including faith-based, First Nations in Australia and Māori in New Zealand,” Rush says.

Celebrating leave

At Hatched Media, employees in Sydney and Melbourne have the opportunity to swap any public holidays, apart from the end-of-year break when the business is closed, for other days.

“We call it celebration leave and the majority of people who do use it, use it on Australia Day. There is some contention around that day, and we wanted to put the decision in the hands of our people on whether they want to work or not,” says Lucy Seward, head of marketing.

Easter is another common period during which people have chosen to work and swap the public holidays for other days that suit them, Seward says.

“Our approach is that if working on Good Friday is going to work for you because your family is coming from overseas to visit the week after and you want to take the Tuesday off, then that's completely fine.

“Being flexible in this way is one of the reasons our people tell us they love working at Hatched,” she says.