We are contemplating the provision of special leave for bereavement and critical illness - if there could be any legal implications?

Dear professionals, I would appreciate your insights on the following matter:

We are contemplating the provision of special leave for bereavement and critical illness. The intention is to address these specific situations without formally including them in our general leave policy due to concerns about potential misuse by employees. My question is whether it is legally necessary to explicitly mention this special leave provision in our policy, and if there could be any legal implications if it is not explicitly stated. Your perspectives on this matter would be valuable.

Thank you for your input.

Special leaves for meeting some special occasions is not a legal mandate for any employer. So long as you are giving 12 days Casual leave, 12 days of sick leave, 12 days of Earned leave and special casual leave for sterilisation at the rate of six days for male employees and fourteen days for female employees under the Kerala Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, you are legally complaint. In addition to these women employees are entitled to maternity leaves also. Over and above these, if you wish to give leaves to meet certain occasions, like death of family member, illness of family member (illness of self would be covered under sick leave) then it is good. But I would suggest that bringing the same in the HR polices, Leave policies would create lot of issues in future. Being a person who has been in the field for more than three decades, what I have observed is that it will be privileges that would become rights later on. Therefore, if you allow special leaves there should be some conditions and it should be purely a managerial prerogative and not a right of employees. In the employee handbook/ leave policy also the same should be mentioned that:

In the absence of any leave to the credits, the management may grant such number of leaves to ensure the presence of the employee at home in the event of death of any family member or to take care of a family member hospitalised.

Now there should be a definition for family member also otherwise, this will be misused.

Thank you.

You are right. We are currently facing a situation where employees are asserting their right to leave extensively.

Could you please provide information on the provisions related to earned leave? Does it apply to employees who have completed one year with the company?

I believe your organisation is in Kerala. As per Kerala Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, an employee who has completed 12 months of service is entitled to 12 days' earned leave. When CL and SL are available during the first year of service itself, the EL is credited once an employee completes one year of service only. In order to make a uniform date of crediting the leave across the organisation, we can credit EL for the first calendar proportionately also. That is, if the date of joining is say 1st Sept, 2023, on 1st January 2024, we can credit 4 days EL to his leave account along with 12 days CL and 12 days SL. This is for administrative purpose only. But you can allow the employee to avail the EL only from September 2024 only. This shall be provided in the leave policy also. It shall be appropriate to have the following sentence in the lave policy.

Leaves will be credited to employees' account on 1st January of every year. Every employee shall be entitled to the following leaves:
Casual Leave: 12 days
Sick leave: 12 days
Earned leave: Every employee who has completed 12 months' service with the company shall be entitled to 12 days' earned leave. In respect of employees who join during the year shall be given credit for such number of leave calculated in proportion to the number of months of service with the company. However, the employee shall avail the leave so credited only after they complete 12 months of service with the company.

Otherwise, you will have to prefix the date in the HRMS so that automatically on the joining date very year 12 days EL will get credited. This will be perfect.

Thank you.
We have only mentioned
 Casual Leave (CL)/ Sick Leave (SL)
 Probationary Leave (PL)
 Earned Leave (EL)
 Maternity Leave (ML)
 Paternity Leave (PL)
 Loss Of Pay (LOP)
 Compensatory Off (CO)
these leaves in our policy.

Is it mandatory to mention 'Special casual leave for sterilization operation' in the policy?

Special casual leave for sterilisation is a one time leave as per Kerala Shops...Act. When your leave policy has leaves like Maternity leaves you can certainly mention special leave for sterilisation also.

One doubt. Do you have a leave called loss of pay leave and do you have any condition for that? Will that not be taken as a right to get it even though it is unpaid. Moreover, what will be the implications of Leave without pay in gratuity? Normally, a leave without pay when it is approved one should not be considered as break in service and the same will qualify for gratuity. On the other hand, if you do not approve a loss of pay leave the same will become interruption of service and the period of LOP will not be counted as service days for deciding continuous service.

I appreciate your kind words and am glad that the information was helpful.

"One doubt. Do you have a leave called loss of pay leave and do you have any condition for that? Will that not be taken as a right to get it even though it is unpaid? " - Certainly, we have implemented it. The policy was formulated without HR guidance, and I believe that may have led to this situation.

Would you be able to provide clarification on whether it is necessary for our IT firm to allocate 12 days each for casual and sick leave? Currently, we are offering a total of 15 leaves, combining both CL (casual leave) and SL (sick leave).

We can renew the leave policy right?

As per law, every employee is entitled to 12 days' CL and 12 days' SL during a year (of 12 months) and again after 12 months 12 days of earned leave (as discussed earlier) The same is applicable to IT companies also even though you work for five days in a week. For legal compliance you should change it and issue a revised leave policy. While releasing the same, please consider my advise about Loss of pay leaves. If you put it in the leave policy, it will become documented and if t is documented, you cannot treat an employee availing it as "absent" without leave and then take action against him. This will lead to lot of confusions in future also. From my experience, what I feel is that we should not offer anything which is not legally mandatory. Of course, paternity leave that is now in force shall continue because it has become part of the service conditions for the existing employees and it is very common among new age establishments.

I appreciate the exchange of ideas. Thank you.