Employee Needs Extended Leave Beyond Earned Days – How Should I Handle This?

I am working in a manufacturing company as an HR Executive. I want to ask, if an employee is going to be on leave for 28 days (from 14.10.2013 to 10.11.2013), but there are only 6.5 EL days pending in his leave account, what should I do? Please guide me.

Regards,
Bandna

Remaining days can be put as LOP, i.e., Loss of Pay. Only 6.5 days' salary for the month will be paid.

Alternatively, if your organization allows, he can take advance leave from the next year and make the payment accordingly.

Regards

You have two options:

1) You can adjust the leave at credit against his absence, and the remaining days can be treated as leave without pay, or

2) You can calculate his leave on a pro-rata basis from January to September and grant the same along with leave at credit if the company's policy permits.

Regards,
B. Saikumar

If the availed leave exceeds the available leave to an employee's credit, it must be considered leave without pay. Additionally, leave without pay cannot be availed by the employee without the approval of the sanctioning authority.

You can allocate 6.5 days as Earned Leave (EL), and the remaining days will be Leave Without Pay (LOP) only. Depending on the leave condition, management may approve taking advance EL for the coming year with special approval. This is a common practice in all industries.

Regards,
Ganesh

Learned follower MmsMnk has very rightly suggested, and I agree with his views in totality. The only thing I would like to add is that advance leave or pro-rata leave cannot be granted to any employee if the company's policies do not permit it. This would create unnecessary demand for advance leave in all such cases, making control very difficult for an HR Manager. If denied to others, this could raise questions from law enforcement agencies, to which there would be no legitimate answer.

To avoid future complications, it is best to stick to the rules and policies currently in force. We can offer help by allowing the concerned employee to take leave without pay if they choose to do so. Otherwise, leave should be categorically denied without any deviation.

Best wishes,
AK Jain
HR Personnel
NCL, CIL