Absence management: Create absence policy

Table of Contents:

Policy type
Basics
Visibility
Entitlement
Long leave
Proration
Carry-over
Tenure adjustments

Admins have the ability to granularly create absence policies to represent each location to ensure that government requirements per policy are met, and then bulk assign these policies to users within that location. Admins can create different policies for each absence type, and assign one policy per type to each employee. Once the absence policy is assigned, the system will automatically calculate absence balances with each absence request approval. 

To create an absence policy, Navigate to the Absence module > absence policies > + New policy

You will be asked to define the following settings to create an absence policy to which you can then assign to an employee(s). 

Policy type

• Name
• Type: Currently we offer the following absence types to create policies.
  • Vacation (paid)
  • Sick leave
  • Parental leave
  • Vacation (unpaid)
  • Family care
  • Child care
  • Short-term allowance
  • Quarantine
  • Lockout
  • Irrevocable exemption
  • Voluntary military service
  • Unlawful strike
  • Lawful strike
  • Remote work
  • Other paid leave
  • Educational leave
  • Garden leave 
  • Long-term sick leave
• Description
• Country: Based on the selected country certain defaults are added to the policy 

Basics

• Time unit
  • Days
  • Hours
• Activity type
  • Working
  • Nonworking (paid)
  • Nonworking (unpaid)
• Certificate requirement
  
  • Not required
  • Required after a specific number of days
  • Optional
• Substitute Requirement
  • Optional
  • Required
  • Not required
• Allow half-day request
  • Enable/disable
• Applicability
  • All days in the work schedule, except public holidays
  • All days, except public holidays
  • All days, including public holidays
• Calendar Color

Visibility

Define which user roles can view/edit the following visibility rules

• Who can see if the employee is absent?
  • Employee (own profile)*
  • Manager of the employee
  • HRBP of employee
  • Payroll admin
  • Admin*
  • Super admin*
  • Everyone
  • Indirect managers of the employee
  • Members of the same team
  • Custom access role(s)
• Who can see the type of absence?
  • Employee (own profile)*
  • Manager of the employee
  • HRBP of employee
  • Payroll admin
  • Admin*
  • Super admin*
  • Everyone
  • Indirect managers of the employee
  • Members of the same team
  • Custom access role(s)
• Who can view create and edit the absence?
  • Employee (own profile)*
  • Manager of the employee*
  • HRBP of employee
  • Payroll admin
  • Admin*
  • Super admin*
  • Everyone
  • Indirect managers of the employee
  • Members of the same team
  • Custom access role(s)

* Roles depicted with an (*) are default roles to the specified visibility settings. All roles except super admins can always be adjusted at any time to be added/removed. 

Entitlement 

• Limit annual absence entitlement under this policy
  • Enable/disable
• Annual entitlement (days)
• Block employees from exceeding entitlement - enable this option to restrict all users with edit rights for the absence from submitting absence requests that exceed their available entitlement. Leave unchecked to allow flexibility, permitting negative balances.
  • Enable/disable
• Enforce a maximum balance - if enabled, the system will check before each grant whether the cumulative balance of the employee exceeds the maximum balance amount. If it does, the grant will be adjusted so that the balance does not exceed the maximum balance amount. 
  • Enable/disable
• Entitlement happens on
  • January 1st
  • Custom day of the year
  • Employee start date (and anniversaries)
• Granting rhythm
  • Every week (1/52 of the entitlement)
  • Every 2 weeks (1/26 of the entitlement)
  • Twice a month on 1st and 16th (1/24 of the entitlement)
  • Every month (1/12 of the entitlement)
  • 25% every quarter (25% of the entitlement)
  • 50% every half year (50% of the entitlement)
  • 100% at the beginning of the accrual year (100% of the entitlement)

German law requires that the minimum annual entitlement for paid vacation days is 20 days. They are usually granted in full on January 1st. Proration rules (see next step) apply.

Long-leave

Define granular settings for employees during long-term leave. 

• Make this a long-term leave policy
  • Enable/disable

System status of the user: You can either keep users active during their long-term leave or let the system automatically deactivate them for the duration of the leave. Please note that active users will continue receiving notifications (unless changed in their profile settings) and can still be enrolled in surveys, reviews, etc.

• Keep the employee's access to Leapsome active during the period of the leave User status will be automatically set to deactivated during the period of the leave, and will be automatically reverted back to initial status when the leave ends).
  
  • Enable/disbale

Proation of absence entitlement (You can adjust the accrual rules for paid vacation during the duration of the long-term leave below.)

• Continue regular acrrual
• Proate entitlements (daily accrual)
• Proate entitlements (only deduct full months)

Proration

Proration rules define the entitlement behavior during the first and last months of an employee's tenure. 

• Prorate entitlement at employment start
  • No proration
  • Daily proration
  • Monthly proration
• Enable waiting period at employment start (enable/disable)
  • Waiting period in months
  • Amount per month (days)
• Prorate entitlement at employment end
  • No proration
  • Daily proration
  • Monthly proration
• Special granting rules for end-of-employment
  • No special rules
  • Grant full entitlement if the employee leaves after the first half of the year
  • Grant the statutory minimum entitlement if the employee leaves after the first half of the year (20 days in Germany)
    Please note: In Germany if a person leaves after working at least 6 full months and within the second half of the year, they'll be granted at least the statutory minimum of 20 days. Otherwise, the amount of entitlement will be prorated according to the setting. 
    • Contractual vacation is only granted if the statutory vacation is less than the proportionally calculated annual vacation entitlement.
• Rounding rule
  • No rounding
  • Round to whole number
  • Round up to nearest half number
  • Round up to nearest whole number
  • Round up to nearest whole number when 0.5 or above
• Grant full entitlement after 6 months, if person leaves in second half of year
  • Enable/disable

Carry-over

• Unused grants can be carried over to next year
  • Enable/disable
• Maximum carry-over amount (Days)
• Months after which carry-over expires

If employees did not use their annual allowance of paid vacation time from a fiscal year, companies can choose to carry over those unused vacation days for the employee to use in the next year.

For example, if an employee obtains their yearly entitlement of vacation days on January 1st, and they have 10 unused vacation days by December 31st, that means they have 10 days that can possibly be carried over to be used in the following year on top of their annual entitlement. The admin can limit the maximum amount of vacation days that can be carried over and set a time limit on when these carried-over days expire. In Germany, unused vacation days can be carried over into the next year, but they expire after 3 months. However, other countries may not have these limitations and, therefore, can make it so the carried-over vacation days have a different length until expiration.

Tenure adjustments

• Grant additional time based on the employee's tenure
  • Enable/disable
• Type of grants
  • One-off grants
  • Recurring grants
• Timing of grants
  • On anniversary
  • For the next accrual year
• Add rule
  • Add after X years
  • Days to add

Companies may want to reward employees for their tenure in the company by providing them with more time off. For example, if the absence policy for a vacation policy has tenure adjustments, then any employee assigned to them with this policy will be considered for an increased number of vacation days when they meet the tenure requirements. Admins can set specifying rules to dictate how many additional days an employee receives based on the length of their employment for the company. Admins can add multiple rules to account for different lengths of time, which will automatically be calculated in an employee's account balance once they hit that tenure. 

A policy must be created for each type in order for that type of policy to be assigned to an employee. Only one policy per type can be assigned for employees. For example, there cannot be two different vacation absence policies assigned to one employee. If policies are edited, each edit will trigger a recalculation of absence balances for all employees who are currently assigned to this absence policy.

Duplicate Absence Policy

Many times, companies will have multiple absence policies for each policy type with only minute differences. Admins can then choose to duplicate a previously created policy, which would create a new policy in draft mode, where you can then make the additional changes. This will reduce manual effort and ensure consistency between the policies where necessary. Navigate to 'Absence' > 'Policies'> click the three dots next to the policy you would like to duplicate > click duplicate absence policy.