Employee on Month-Long Leave: Should We Pay for Weekends Off Too?

If an employee takes one month of leave and our company allows Saturdays and Sundays as weekends off, is it necessary to pay them for the weekends? We have paid them for 8 days out of the whole month of leave.

Hi, In the normal course, if an employee proceeds on leave for a period of one month, the in-between Saturday/Sunday is to be adjusted against leave only, and it cannot be treated separately as a weekly off. Accordingly, subject to leave eligibility, the employee will be eligible for salary for the whole month only. In case of no leave eligibility, the employee will be marked as loss of pay/leave without pay, including Saturday/Sunday.

Holidays/weekly offs could be prefixed/suffixed. Those sandwiched would be treated as leave only.

The 'period of approved leave' (if EL/PL/SL/ML only) includes the intervening weekly-off days, counted as part of paid leave. Except if weekly-off days are either suffixed or prefixed. If so, those days are not counted as part of leave days; instead, they are normal paid holidays. On the other hand, if CL is availed, in this case, the weekly-off days are not counted for accounting 'leave period'; here the treatment is different.

It is obvious to pay for the whole month (including the number of weekly off days), as per your posts.

Yes, unless your company's leave policy specifically excludes off days from being counted as part of the leave allowance.

In normal conditions, holidays/weekly offs could be prefixed/suffixed under the sandwich policy. Those would be treated as leave only. As it's a whole month leave, the company need not pay. In case he applied it as EL, those days can be paid as per your company's leave policies.

Regards, Hima Reddy
HR Manager