New Leave Policy | Zoho People

Introduction:

Different organizations follow different leave policies depending on their line of business. There are various leave types like Sick Leave, Annual Leave, Casual Leave, Maternity leave depending on the policies that each organization follows. Zoho People's leave service gives an extensive platform to configure any type of leave. There are various options for Accrual, Reset, experience-based leave types, Carry forward of leave and more that are possible using Zoho People.

New leave type configuration:

From your home page, go to Leave > Settings > Leave Type > Add
Give a Name and Code - Code is used as a unique way to identify the leave type. For eg, the code for Casual Leave can be given for CL for easy identification
Select whether the leave should be Paid or Unpaid or On Duty or Restricted holiday
Under Unit, select 'Days' or 'Hours' and give a description
Validity - this refers to the period for which the leave type is valid. All reports generated for this leave type will be for the period chosen here.

I. Entitlement:

Effective After - 'Years' here denotes the Years after the Date of Joining. For eg, 2 years indicates that the leave is effective after 2 years from the Date of Joining.

Accrual - Leave accrual is a method by which you can define that the leave should be utilized within the period that you select. For example, if you select 'Monthly' as the accrual period and enter the entitlement as 1, then it means that the employee can avail one day of leave every month under this leave type. For options like Yearly, Half Yearly, you can also set the date and month.

Reset - Here, you can define whether the leave balance should be reset and also set the date and month for the reset to happen.

Carry Forward - If you would like to carry forward leave, then you can set it here. There are two options - Units and Percentage.

Units or percentage that you set here will be applicable to the leave balance. For example, assume that the entitlement is 12 days. You have defined that the maximum carry forward should be 5 days and the maximum number of days to be encashed is 3 days. In this case, if the balance left is 8 days, then 5 days will be carried forward, 2 days will be for encashment and 1 day will lapse.

Let's consider another scenario. Assume that the entitlement is 12 days and the leave taken is 10 days. In this case, the remaining 2 days will be carried forward and not encashed. So, it is good to understand that the Carry Forward option takes precedence over the Encashment option. In the Carry Forward option, you can also give an expiry time. I.e - if you give 6 months, in 'Expires In' then it means that the leave that is carried forward should be taken within six months. This six months also depends on Accrual. For example, if it is a Yearly leave accrual that happens on the 1st of Jan every year, then the six months carry forward will be until June.

Prorate Accrual - In this section, you can define how to prorate accrual. There are three options here:

a. Start of policy - Start of policy is the date on which the policy is effective from. I.e - if you have given 2years in 'Effective after' then each employee will be eligible for this leave from the date of completing 2 years from the Date of Joining. If an employee joins the organization on 15 Oct 2015, then the 'Start of Policy' for the employee will be 15 Oct 2017. Here, If you have given prorate at the start of the policy with the monthly accrual of 1 day, then on 15 Oct 2017, the employee will be eligible for 0.5 days. From Nov 2017, he/she will be eligible for one day each month.

b. Start and end of policy - Let's consider a scenario. Assume that you have set an entitlement of 12 days for employees who completed 1 year of service and 24 days for employees who have completed 1.6 years of service. The first policy will start when the employee completes 1 year and will be applicable until the policy ends (i.e - until 1.6 years of joining). Now assume you have given a monthly accrual of 1 day. If you have selected 'Start and end of policy' in 'Prorate Accrual', then on 15 Oct 2016 (after a year of joining), the employee's eligibility from Start to End of Policy (Oct 2016 - March 2017) will be 0.5 days (for Oct) + 4.5 days (1 day each for Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, until 15 March 17). From 15 March 2017 to 15 Oct 2017, the entitlement will be 1 day (for March 2017) + 2 days per month for the rest of his/her tenure.

c. Do not prorate - If you select this option, there will be no pro-rata done. For example, if you have set the monthly accrual as 1 day, then irrespective of when the employee joins in a month, he will get one day for that month.

Removing of prorate accrual - there is also an option, where you can click on the '-' prorate and remove this option altogether. If you do this, leave will not be given on a pro-rata basis. I.e - If you have set a monthly accrual of 1 day on the 1st of every month and remove this option, then an employee who joins on any day apart from the 1st of the month will not get any leave for that month. The difference between 'do not prorate' and removing prorate is that, in the first option, leave will be issued to the employee and in the second option, the employee will lose the leave if he does not fall under the accrual period set.

More options:

If you click on 'More options', you will see three options.

a. Opening Balance:

This will be helpful in scenarios like Probation period leave. For example, if you have a monthly accrual of 1 day and for the first six months of service, this leave should not be taken, then you can simply enter '6'. At the end of six months, an employee will have 6months accumulated already and from the 7th month, he/she will get 1 day per month. Here, in order to prevent the employee from using this leave before six months, you can give 6 months under 'Effective from'.

Let's consider another scenario. Assume you have something called the Privilege leave of 12 days which is applicable to employees who have completed a year of service. So, at the end of 12 months, you will start them with an opening balance of 12 and from the 13th month, they will accumulate leave as per what you have defined in the accrual.

b. Carryover Previous Policy Balance - Let's assume you have policy 1 which is applicable to a set of conditions and policy 2 which is applicable to another set of conditions. When an employee gets changed from one policy to another, you can decide how many of the previous policy's leave should be carried forward to the next policy or not.

Let's take a scenario to understand this better. Assume that policy 1 states that employees are eligible for 12 days of leave in the first year of service. Policy 2 states that employees are eligible for 24 days of leave in their second year of service. Assume that you have set a monthly accrual that will happen on 1st of every month.

An employee joins on 1 Oct 2016.

Entitlement from 1 Oct - 31 Dec 2016 = 3 days

Entitlement from 1 Jan 17 - 30 Sep 2017 = 9 days

Entitlement from 1 Oct 2017 - 31 Dec 2017 = 6 days (2 days each month)

Number of days of leave taken from 1 Oct 2016 - 30 Sep 2017 = 5 days

Balance available for the first year of service = 7 days

If you have set this balance to be carried forward to the next policy, then as on 1 Oct 2017, the employee will start with a balance of 7 days. If you have given the carryover count as 5, then 5 out of 7 days balance will be carried forward to the next leave policy. If you do not use this option, then the unused 7 days balance will lapse.

c. Maximum Balance - This indicates the maximum number of days that can be accumulated. For eg, assume you have a monthly accrual of 1 day and you have set 5 as the maximum balance. In this case, if an employee has not utilized any leave until June, then he should ideally be having a balance of 6 as on June 30th. However, since you have set the maximum balance as 5, the balance will only be 5 as on June 30th. There will be a lapse of 1 day. If you would like to encourage employees to take leave rather than accumulate it, then you can make use of this option.

II. Applicability:

In this section, you can define who the leave is applicable to. You have options like Gender, Marital Status, Department, Designation, Location, Role here. You also have an option 'Employee'. This is useful in scenarios where you would like to make one or more employees applicable to this leave type. For example, if you have given the location as 'India' but you would like to make a specific employee in the US region to be part of this leave type, then you can include the employee in this section.

Exceptions: Here is where you can set the exception based on options like Department, Designation, Location, and Role. Here also, you can include one or more employees who do not belong to the first set (Department, Designation, Location, and Role).

III. Restrictions:

Weekends in the leave period: Here, you can set whether weekends during the leave period should be included or not. You can also give a value here. For example, if you give 5, then if the total leave period exceeds 5, then the weekend in this period will be included.

Holidays in the leave period: You can set whether the holidays in the leave period should be included. You can also give a count to indicate that if the leave period exceeds X days, then the holidays should be included.

Enable quarter-day option: If this option is enabled, then employees can apply for quarter-day leave under this leave type.

Enable half-day option: If this option is enabled, then employees can apply for half-day leave under this leave type.

Enable hourly option: If this option is enabled, then employees can apply for hour-based leave.

The maximum number of consecutive day(s) of leave allowed: This option helps to restrict the number of consecutive days of leave that can be taken.

Enable file upload option if the applied leave period exceeds (x) days: This is useful for leave types like Sick Leave, where, you would like employees to upload a file (like a Medical certificate) if the leave exceeds the number that you have given here.

Do not combine this leave with (Leave types): If you do not want employees to club this leave type with another leave type while applying for leave, you can make use of this option.

Use cases:

Work anniversary-based leave type:

Assume that you would like to create a leave type in which, leave gets accrued every year on the joining date of the employee. You can configure this with the steps given below.

Go to Leave Tracker > Settings > Leave Type > Add
Give a name. For eg - Work Anniversary leave and type in a code
Under Type, select 'Paid' and give a description
Unter 'Entitlement', go to Accrual
Select 'Yearly' on 'Joining Date', and in the next drop-down, select 'Joining Month'
In 'Reset', select 'Yearly', on 'Joining Date', and in the next drop-down, select 'Joining Month'
Enter 5 in 'No of days
Click 'Submit'

As per this configuration, an employee who has joined on 3rd June 2016 will be eligible to take 5 days of leave under this leave type until 2nd June 2017. On 3rd June 2017, again there will be an eligibility of 5 days until the next year and so on.

Sick leave:

Assume you would like to configure sick leave. The condition is that you would like employees to be eligible for 1 day of leave at the end of every month. Assume that you do not want this leave to be carried forward to the next year. Follow the steps given below to do this.

Go to Leave Tracker > Settings > Leave Type > Add
Give the name as 'Sick Leave' and give a code - for eg SL
Select the leave type as 'Paid' and give a description if needed
Under 'Entitlement', go to Accrual, and select 'Monthly' in the first dropdown, '31' in the second drop-down and give 1 in 'No of days'
Under 'Reset', in the first drop-down, select 'Yearly', select '31st' in the second one and 'Dec' in the third drop-down
Go to 'Applicability' and select the options as required
Go to 'Restrictions', check the options that are required
Check 'Enable file upload option if the applied leave exceeds' and give a value
Click 'Submit'

Leave type with carrying forward options:

Consider a scenario where you would like to provide an entitlement of 12 days of leave every year. Assume that you want only 50% of the balance leave to be carried forward and 25% of the balance to be encashed. Follow the steps to define a leave policy to achieve this.

Go to Leave Tracker > Settings > Leave Type > Add
Give a name - for eg. Casual Leave and give a code - CL
Select the leave type as 'Paid' and give a description if needed
Under 'Accrual', select 'Yearly' in the first dropdown, '1st' in the second dropdown and 'Jan' in the third drop-down
Enter '12' in the no of days
Under 'Carry Forward', enter 50 in the first drop down and select 'Percentage' in the second drop-down
Give an expiry period if needed
Under 'Encashment', enter 25 in the first drop-down, and select 'Percentage' in the second drop-down
Under 'Applicability' and 'Restrictions', select the options that you require
Click 'Submit'

Experience-based leave type:

Consider a scenario where you would like to define leave entitlements based on the years of experience of employees. Assume you want to set a policy with the requirement as given below.

0-1 Year of experience - a total of 6 days, with a monthly accrual of 0.5 days
1-2 years of experience - a total of 12 days, with a monthly accrual of 1 day
Above 2 years of experience - a total of 24 days with a monthly accrual of 2 days

Follow the steps given below to do this.

Go to Leave Tracker > Settings > Leave Type > Add
Give a name - for eg - Experience-based leave and give a code - EXPL
Select the leave type as 'Paid' and give a description if needed
Under 'Entitlement', go to 'Effective After' and give 0 years
Under 'Accrual', set it as 'Monthly' on '1st' and give 1 under 'No of days'- for eg - 0.5 days
Go to 'Prorate Accrual', and select 'Start and End of Policy'
Click Submit once you finish the other part of the settings in 'Applicability' and 'Restrictions'

If you select this option, then prorate of leave will happen as soon as an employee joins the organization and will continue till the employee begins the second year of service. For eg, if an employee joins on 15th of March 2018, then, he will be eligible for 0.25 days of leave in March 2018, followed by 0.5 days per month until 28 Feb 2019. From 1 March 2019 -15 March 2019, he will be eligible for 0.25 days.

Now, the employee will be eligible for 0.5 days (half of the 1-month accrual limit) from 16 March until 31 March 2019. From 1 April 2019 until 29 Feb 2020, he will be eligible for 1 days per month. From 1 March 2019 until 15 March 2019, he will be eligible for 0.5 days and from thereon, he will be eligible for 2 days per month.

Probation Period leave:

Assume a scenario in which you would like to have an employee eligible for 1 day of leave per month. However, you would like to restrict employees from availing this leave during the probation period which is 6months. At the end of six months, you would like to give them this leave along with their usual entitlement. Follow the steps given below to achieve this.

Go to Leave Tracker > Settings > Leave Type > Add
Give a name. For eg - Probation Leave and type in a code
Under Type, select 'Paid' and give a description
Unter 'Entitlement', go to 'Effective From' and enter 6 months
Go to Accrual
Select 'Monthly' on '31st' and under 'No of days', type 1
Click on 'More option +' and under Opening Balance type 6

This means, the six days will be accumulated as the opening balance and when the employee begins the policy, he/she will already have this balance credited.

Go to 'Applicability' and 'All Roles' under 'Role'
Click 'Submit'

Privilege leave:

Assume that you have a Privilege Leave for employees who have completed 5 years of service. You would like to give 10 days every year, and would also like to set an expiry period of 2 years. To achieve this, follow the steps as given below.

Go to Leave Tracker > Settings > Leave Type > Add
Give a name. For eg - Probation Leave and type in a code
Under Type, select 'Paid' and give a description
Unter 'Entitlement', go to 'Effective From' and enter 5 Years
Go to Accrual
Select 'Yearly' on '1st' 'Jan' and under 'No of days', type 10
Under 'Carry Forward', enter '100', select 'Percentage' in the drop-down and under 'Expires in', enter 12 months (for eg)
Click 'Submit' once you finish the other part of the settings in 'Applicability' and 'Restrictions'

Once this leave type is set, an employee who completes 5 years of service will be eligible for 10 days of leave at the beginning of every year. While he/she can carry over the entire 10 years to the next year, this leave will expire in 2 years (i.e - end of the 6th year of service).

Customize Policy:

This tab shows all the leave types for which each and employees are eligible for. If you would like to know the list of policies that are applicable to an employee, select the employee from the drop-down. All the policies to which she belongs to will be listed. You can click on the policy to see more details. There are three options shown when you click on the ellipsis icon on the left-hand side when you hover over a policy.

View Transaction: If you select a date range, you will be able to see all the policies that have been activated for the chosen employee. You can see, the number of days added under each section like Accrual, Reset etc, the number of days that have been added, the number of days utilized and the balance left. This gives a complete view of all the configurations that have been done under a particular policy.
Regenerate Report: This option is useful if there is some change that has been missed out. Assume that, based on the Casual Leave policy configuration, there were changes in the leave details for an employee but this modification has been missed out in the report. In this case, if you Regenerate the report, then the report will be run once again based on the configuration.
Reset to default: Assume that you have customized the policy for an employee but after some months or years, you would like to undo this customization and revert the employee back to the default configuration. In this case, you can make use of the 'Restore to Default' option. This option is also useful if you have done a customization erroneously for the wrong employee and want to revert him back to the original configuration.

Refresh Policies:

To do a quick re-check to fix any eligibility mismatch of the employee with the current policy, you can make use of this option. To use this option:

Select the employee from the employee search dropdown
Click on the ellipsis icon in the right top corner and select 'Refresh Policies'
Give a confirmation for the system to go ahead with the checking of any eligibility mismatch

To view old policy details for an employee:

Select the employee from the drop-down
Click on the filter and select 'Previous'
Hit 'Search'