Curious About the 'Open Leave' Concept? Let's Discuss What It Really Means

Dear All, Greetings! Can you please help with the concept of 'open leave'? I have been hearing a lot about it nowadays.

Thanks in advance.
Regards

Understanding Open Leave Policies

An open leave policy is a policy wherein the employer gives flexibility to the employees on the number of leaves and when to take them. In other words, there is no fixed number of leaves, nor categorization of leaves as Sick/Casual/Earned/Special leaves.

Pros and Cons of Open Leave Policies

Now, an open leave policy has its own pros and cons. In my organization, there was an open leave policy structure, but it affected us adversely because:

- A particular department took leaves as high as 30-40 days per annum.
- Another department wasn't able to avail leaves so frequently.
- People not taking leaves weren't able to distinguish themselves as they weren't recognized.

So, we switched to the traditional maximum X leaves per annum policy. You need to figure out how the policy would impact your organization depending on the nature of work, industry/sector you fall into, and the kind of people.

Wish you luck and hope it helped :)

EPF vs. PPF: Key Differences

EPF differs from PPF in one respect. In EPF, there is a concept of 'Employer's Contribution' (12% of Basic + DA), which does not feature in PPF. From the viewpoint of Income Tax, contributions to either are covered under Section 80C. However, contributions both by the employee and employer to EPF are mandatory if the employee's salary (Basic + DA) does not exceed Rs 6500/-.

Challenges of Implementing 'Open Leave' in India

As regards the issue of 'Open Leave', it is a 'difficult to implement concept' in the Indian environment and is thus not being practiced. However, it will benefit us all if someone (in whose company it is being followed) can guide us about the process deployed for leave approval, record-keeping, and analysis.

Rightly said, sir. As I mentioned earlier, we practiced this policy before.

Anyone who intended to take leave was to write an application, which was approved 99% of the time (the 1% was only when too many people were taking holidays at the same or a similar period). We used to file those applications, but honestly, tracking them was difficult.

Negative Aspects of Open Leave Policy

We were not able to track contingency leaves. Many people just called or texted their HOD about not coming due to health issues. This went unreported, making it difficult to determine the actual number of leaves availed (also, we don't have a punch card system; we use traditional muster attendance).

People who seldom took leaves for genuine reasons were not recognized because of the inability to track things down.

Certain people were able to enjoy as many as 30-40 paid leaves a year, while there were a few who never availed one and were never appreciated for it (lack of tracking).

The company was not able to punish frequent leave takers for two reasons:

a) No maximum leaves per year were declared.

b) As mentioned before, difficulty in tracking leaves.

As a result, when I joined as HR here a couple of months back, I reframed and designed the leave policy to a maximum of X leaves per year. Sure, people may take advantage of it, but once they know they'd be rewarded for not availing those leaves, they'd think before taking leaves casually.

Hope it helped :)

Understanding the Concept of Open Leave

Open Leave is a new concept I came across. I would like to know more about the open leave concept. Kindly share valuable information in this regard.

Regards

Dear all, Open Leave is a new concept I have come across. I would like to know more about the open leave concept. Kindly share valuable information in this regard.

Dear Mansi, if you'd read the posts, I guess things are a little clearer. In addition, you can check the following:

A company implementing this policy and explaining the basics of it:

- [link no longer exists - removed]
- [And Now for Something Completely Different: TechTarget's 'Open Leave' Policy - Matt Kinsman - Blogs B2B @ FolioMag.com](http://www.foliomag.com/2008/and-now-something-completely-different-techtargets-open-leave-policy)
- [Open Leave Policy the Holiday of Holidays | Groonk[dot]Net](http://www.groonk.net/blog/2006/12/open-leave-policy-the-holiday-of-holidays)

Hope it helped :)