Navigating Employee Appraisals During Extended Leave: How Should We Proceed?

Employee Leave and Appraisal Query

An employee was on maternity leave for 3 months from September to November. After this, she continued on loss of pay (LOP) leave for 3 months—from December to February—and has requested a further extension of LOP leave for 2 more months—from March to April. Her annual appraisal is due from February 2017.

My questions are:
1. Do we extend her annual appraisal by the number of months that she was on LOP leave?
2. Do we issue the annual appraisal letter starting from February 2017, but the effective date for her revised salary will be her date of rejoining, correct?

1) How can you plan the appraisal without the presence of the employee? Do you have any rating system for measuring performance? If you plan it at all, it might not be an effective appraisal.

2) Anyhow, she is on Leave Without Pay (LOP), so even if it is dated February 2017, the revised salary may not be paid. So anything is fine.

My first question is what I really need inputs for - since she is on LOP for two months post maternity leave, do we extend her appraisal period by two months?

Dear Madam,

Jeevarathnam P sir is saying the same thing. The employee is on LOP. So even if you implement the appraisal from Feb 2017, she won't be paid anything until she resumes work in the month of April 2017. Ultimately, she will receive her revised salary in April 2017 only.

Salary Increment and Performance Appraisal

It's important to know that a salary increment is not a byproduct of the performance appraisal process. Performance appraisal is a much larger ball game. As a practice, companies link the PA with merit awards and salary adjustment.

If the PA is not related to salary adjustment, feel free to do it when she joins back and resumes her duties. Talking about salary adjustment, it is vital for you to first refer to your HR manual to assess how many days of continued presence are expected from an employee to be eligible for a salary adjustment.

If she is eligible for a salary adjustment, let her resume her duties and perform the PA to follow the next course of action. She can be paid arrears if the process gets delayed for her. Please feel free to drop a mail to her expressing your inability to do a PA and clarify to her the process you will follow after she resumes. I think that would help you manage expectations at both ends.

Best wishes!

The employee concerned is on leave of absence without pay (LOP), which is duly approved by the employer. After rejoining duty, the performance appraisal process can be initiated.