Employee Emergency: Should I Grant Half-Day Leave for Helping a Sick Colleague?

In this situation, one of our employees (A) has contracted malaria as he is not residing with his family. Another employee (B) took him to the hospital since they were staying at the same residence. Should I mark half-day leave for employee (B) or not? This is because, due to a medical emergency, he was unable to come to work.

Please suggest if there are any alternative actions that can be taken.

An employer's duty is to support the employee in case of sickness or any other emergency while on duty. If an employee falls ill in the office, it is the employer's responsibility to take them to the hospital and provide support until their family members arrive. Therefore, as a second employee, you must fulfill your company duty by following these guidelines.

Thank you.
Regards.

Please check whether employee B went to the hospital with employee A or not. If he really went to support employee A, then you are not supposed to mark half a day leave. This is because he has not taken leave for personal reasons.

Thank you.

Please mark the absence of the employee who is currently in the hospital attending to a patient. He is on duty because he had received permission to do so.

Thanks & regards,

Sumit Kumar Saxena
[Phone Number Removed For Privacy Reasons]

Please mark the absence of the employee who is currently in the hospital attending to a patient. He is on duty because he was granted permission for the same.

Thanks & Regards,

Sumit Kumar Saxena
[Phone Number Removed For Privacy Reasons]

Actually, this is a duty of personnel management in every organization. HR personnel have to take care of the FIRST AID KIT and assist in cases of sickness or any employee emergencies that require hospital admission. These responsibilities are typically handled by the HR department.

In this case, the individual was working for the company and performing their duties. Therefore, we can consider this as being 'ON DUTY'.

Regards,
Vinay Kumar.

A very valid question, but being in the role of HR, you should apply the norms instead of logic towards sentiments and personal matters. As you mentioned, B extended his personal assistance to A outside of work premises. It doesn't matter whether he stays with him or not, whether A lives alone or with family; what matters here is whether these two people have informed their respective seniors in advance or not.

According to your company's leave policy, you should discuss A's case with his seniors before proceeding further. For B, if it's an informed leave, then it's an exception to his seniors' opinion. If it's not an informed leave, go ahead and mark his absence for half a day (subject to your policy; you can mark it as CL if you accept the CL application form post-leaves).

Feel free to check with us if you still have any doubts.

Personal Affairs and Leave Policies

How come such queries are appearing here? If the family is not with the employee and one of his friends is accompanying him to the hospital, it is purely their personal affair. The employee may avail Sick Leave (SL) and his friend Casual Leave (CL) if any.

Regards,
Pon

Yes, I agree with that. Sometimes we have to think beyond the policies, especially in real-time emergencies that are visible to management. In this scenario, we can assign Employee B to complete their working hours in the upcoming days. This way, there won't be any issues when calculating the total working hours at the end of the month.

Thanks

I completely agree with Mr. Anil and Ms. Ashapriya's suggestion. Kindly review your HR policy and discuss with employees in Departments A and B, along with their HODs/seniors, to confirm if they have obtained permission. Then, you can designate their leave as SL, CL, or OD.

With regards,
Samer K. Ghosh