Confused About Leave Deductions: Should We Count 3 Days or 7 Days?

One employee of our company attended the office on Oct 18 (Sat) and resumed work on Oct 27 (Mon). In this scenario, we have deducted 7 days of leave, but he insists it should only be 3 days, based on the following breakdown:

- Oct 19 (Sun): Holiday
- Oct 20 - 22: 3 days of unpaid leave
- Oct 23: Diwali
- Oct 24: Carried forward one pending leave from September
- Oct 25: Last Saturday is off, but that day's Saturday leave was canceled due to extra work at the office, and all employees came in

Please advise whether we should deduct 3 days' salary or 7 days.

Thank you for your assistance.

Regards,
Amit

Interesting mix of holidays... In true policy terms, the rule is quite clear:

1. You cannot mix two different categories of leaves—for example, you cannot club PL and CL or comp offs to create one large bundle of leaves... 

2. If a holiday falls in between two sanctioned leaves, then that day would also be counted as leave. So, if you are off on Saturday and also on Monday, then Sunday will also be counted as leave. Although you have taken 2 days leave, 3 days will reflect in your leave account.

But like all policies, the final authority is the organization. Many organizations do not implement it as strictly and are quite flexible. However, the right to approve such a mix rests with the organization, and prior permission is needed for such approval. Otherwise, norms will need to be followed.

In your case, the employee attended on the 18th, so for all practical purposes, his leave would be from the 20th of October—Monday till the next Saturday. Since he attended the office on the 27th, he should actually have been deducted 6 days of leave and not 7. So even you guys have wrongly deducted... 

Leave is always a sticky issue and needs to be handled very delicately.

Cheers,

Navneet