Managing Long Employee Leaves: How Do You Handle Coverage and Business Impact?

Can we put a cap on the minimum number of consecutive leaves an employee can take? Some of our departments have one person handling the role, and when they take long leaves, such as one week or more, their duties are not handled by anyone else, which affects the business.

Hi, it depends on the reason for leave. If an employee is getting married and is planning for two weeks of leave, how can an employer restrict it? The same logic applies to sick leave; if an employee is suffering from an infectious sickness, you cannot restrict leave for such cases.

From an employer's point of view, it is true that you cannot hold work or a project just because someone is absent due to reasons like X or Y, as clients will not accept such excuses. Therefore, an Employee Backup Plan should be in place so that even in the event of a key performer resigning, you can ensure a smooth flow of work without any disturbance.

Room for exceptions can always be made when it comes to marriage, sickness, or death in the family. When it comes to smaller organizations, it ends up being the managers taking on the responsibilities of the executives.

Limit on Consecutive Leaves

I would like to know what kind of limit we can have for the maximum number of consecutive leaves an employee can take.

Leaves are subject to certain conditions like advance application for leave, the number of times that leave can be availed, etc. You can enforce it very strictly to avoid frequent and uninformed leaves. Please refer to what is mentioned under the Factories Act and Shops and Commercial Establishments Act regarding the granting of leaves.

In a factory, earned leave of one day for every 20 days worked is applicable to the category of workers/employees falling under the workman category. What about the leaves for those categories of employees not covered in the workman category?

Thanks,

True, the provisions of the Factories Act apply only to workers in the factory. In respect of employees who have supervisory or managerial functions, you can have separate leave rules. However, when it becomes more employee-friendly, the next demand from the union will be to make it applicable to them as well. Therefore, it is always good to keep it in line with the workers.