Getting started with leave in days

Leave in days scenarios

Scenario 1

An agreement states that 96 hours of sick leave will be given after 6 months of employment, and every 12 months thereafter. On the surface, it seems like the employer is providing 10 days (80 hours) of sick leave (the minimum required by law) plus an extra 2 days (16 hours), right?

Wrong!

This would only be compliant if all employees work exactly 8 hours a day, and never change their hours or their schedules. Given the growing trend for flexible workplace agreements, this is unlikely to happen.

Let’s say Mustafa has this clause in his agreement. Mustafa works 12 hours a day, 4 days a week (he works a total of 48 hours a week and his ‘day’ is ‘worth’ 12 hours). If Mustafa becomes very ill and needs to use all of his sick leave entitlement (96 hours), he would in reality only get 8 days of sick leave which is less than the minimum legal requirement.

Scenario 2

An agreement states that everyone will receive their 10 days of sick leave as mandated by law, and they’ll also receive an extra 16 hours a year on top. Let’s see how differently the same clause impacts two employees:

Jenny works 4 hours every week day (20 hours a week). She will be entitled to 10 sick days under the law, and she will also receive an extra 4 days.
Bob works 8 hours every week day (40 hours a week). He will be entitled to 10 sick days under the law, but will only receive an extra 2 days. When he finds out, Bob’s revenge will be swift!

Scenario 3

A client is currently giving the minimum legal number of sick days to all employees (10 days). They are getting complaints from employees who work fewer hours per day than others.

These people feel that they are being short-changed because… “less hours worked = less sick pay received”.

The client decides to move from managing everyone’s sick leave in days to managing it in hours.

The result? Jenny and Bob fighting in the lunch room!

Scenario 4

An agreement states that 10 days of sick leave will be given to employees after 6 months of employment, then 15 days every 12 months thereafter.

The second allocation gives an extra 5 days. If the client asks you about converting sick leave balances from days to hours, they would be unable to convert the first 10 days due to compliance reasons.

As for the remaining 5 days, it would be extremely difficult to convert employees who work variable hours. And it would be damned near impossible to work out how many days need to be converted for employees who have been there for many years.

Scenario 5

A New Zealand agreement states that sick leave will be provided to employees according to New Zealand Holidays Act 2003 provisions.

However, when the payroll was implemented, sick leave was configured to be in hours because there were only 100 employees and they all worked 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (so it was configured as 80 hours).

Since implementation, the number of employees has increased and some now have different work patterns. Some no longer work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Some work fewer than 40 hours. Others work just over 40 hours a week.

The result is that some employees are now receiving more and others less than the provisions in the Act. It’s also become difficult to prove that employees who don’t work 40 hours a week (8 hours a day, 5 days a week) have 10 days to take (or have taken) as sick leave.

Scenario 6