This note tries to specify, as clearly as possible, the leave that an employee can take and how we calculate leave availability in this company.

Last updated: 10 Feb 2016.

One kind of leave

In sarkaari jobs, there are all sorts of types of leave. There is Earned Leave, Casual Leave, Medical Leave, and a few other types of leave, other than the normal holidays that everyone gets. In this company, you have only one kind of leave, which we will called Privilege Leave. This is similar to the Earned Leave concept in the public sector companies.

Privilege Leave is accrued, or collected, as you work in the company. Every six months of service gets you 11 days of privilege leave (22 days per year). This leave is added to your leave balance on 1 April and 1 October of every year. And it stays in this leave balance till you consume some of it by taking leave.

When you take leave, your leave balance is decremented by the number of working days you have been on leave. Sundays are not counted for calculating days of leave consumed. The second and fourth Saturdays every month are holidays; the rest are working days. By counting only working days and not calendar days, we are actually providing a more employee-friendly policy than Indian public sector companies, who count calendar days, including any weekends at the beginning and end of the leave period. We count only working days.

Sanctioning of leave

Leave must be applied for and sanctioned or granted. A positive leave balance does not translate into an automatic right for the employee to take leave whenever he wants, without permission. He has to request for leave, to his reporting officer, at least two working days in advance. This must be done by filing a leave application on the online HRMS portal merce.emportant.in, in addition to any verbal request.

If you go on leave without prior sanction, you will need to have a really good reason for it when you rejoin. If not, this sort of behaviour is treated as seriously unprofessional conduct. And the final decision of what constitutes a really good reason is left to your reporting officer and the company management, not to you.

If you go on unsanctioned leave, and do not have a really good reason for it, then you will lose salary from that month for the days of leave, even if you have a positive leave balance.

Remember that granting of leave is not the same as your requesting for leave. Your job is not over after you shoot off an online application. You are granted leave only after your reporting officer accepts your request and grants you the leave. Not till then. We know that these are common-sense things, but we have seen alarming absence of this very common sense in some cases in the past. (Yes, we have an interesting past.)

Sanctioning of leave is sometimes quite difficult. See this example ... it was a response to one engineer's leave request.

Lapsing of leave balance

What happens to a chap who never takes leave at all? His leave balance will reach 22 days in about a year's time, and stop there. No one's leave balance can exceed 22 days. If your leave balance is 18 days on 31 March 2007, and 1 April comes by, then your leave balance will not grow to 18+11 = 29 days. It will grow to 22 days, and stop there. If you do not take any leave in the next six months, then on 1 October your leave balance will continue to stay at 22 days. In other words, the leave that you're earning by working in the company is lapsing. You are not getting the benefit of that leave. Therefore, isn't it a smart idea to take leave periodically and just go jaywalking? The company is paying for it, after all. (We are serious; we want all employees to take leave periodically. It keeps everyone sane.)

New recruits

What happens to a new recruit in the first few months of his life in Merce? Well, if he's on probation, then his leave balance is zero days, and remains at zero days through his probation period. After he's confirmed, his leave balance remains zero till he hits one of the magic dates: 1 April or 1 October. On that date, his leave balance is credited with a few days, depending on how long he's been in service during the preceding six months. The period of service after confirmation is considered, not the probation period.

For example:

• first working day: 1 Feb 2010, on probation
• confirmation from: 1 July 2010
• leave credited on 1 October: 7 days, not 11 days

This is because the period of service considered for leave credit is 1 July to 30 Sep (four months), not 1 Feb to 30 Sep.

What if a chappie joins on 25 March 2007, has no probation period, and hits 1 April 2007? In that case, he gets no leave credit on 1 April 2007. Six months service would have gotten him 11 days of leave, so five days of service gets him zero, pro rata.

Final settlement while resigning

What happens when a person resigns? At that time, her leave balance will be converted into money, by the simple formula of each day accounting for 3.33% of her gross monthly salary. This money amount will be added to her final settlement calculations. This is called leave encashment. The only time a Merce employee can encash her leave is when she resigns.

In some cases, the employee can owe money to the company instead of getting money from the company, as will be described below.

If a person resigns without giving the company the stipulated notice period, then leave balance if any is not encashed. In other words, you lose the equivalent amount of money.

Negative leave balance

What happens when a person who has three days of leave balance takes five days of leave? We will normally not allow any negative leave balance to accumulate in any leave account. In other words, if you have 3 days leave balance and take five days' leave, you will lose 2 days pay from that month's salary.

In exceptional cases, typically in cases of serious ill-health after a service record of more than two years, we may allow a maximum of -10 (minus-ten) days of negative leave balance (well, if you think algebraically, it should be a minimum of minus-ten, but you get the drift). We will accept this negative leave balance assuming that he will work for Merce for six more months and will earn enough days to make the leave balance positive, before he resigns.

Therefore, imagine that someone has leave balance of 5 days, on 1 Jan, and goes on 8 working days of leave. When he returns from leave, his leave balance is -3 (minus-three). We will deduct money from his salary for January for three days, because he has taken three days unpaid leave. And his leave balance will be zero. On 1 April, he will get 11 new days credited to his leave balance, and his balance will become +11.

As explained above, in exceptional cases, for officers with a long service record and in cases of unavoidable personal emergency, we may allow him to overdraw his leave and accumulate a negative leave balance, with special permission.

If a person is on probation, he gets two days of paid leave during his entire probation period. If he takes three days of leave, his salary is deducted for the third day's pay.

What happens when a person with a negative leave balance resigns? In that case, in his final account settlement with the company, he will owe the company an amount for his overdrawn leave, calculated by the formula specified above. So leave encashment will work both ways.

Unpaid leave

People can take unpaid leave for personal reasons, e.g. for preparing for an exam. Once the reporting officer(s) of this employee sanction this leave, there is no limit to the amount of unpaid leave the employee may be granted. Please note that this is not an employee's right; it's a privilege. Therefore, an employee can't just walk up and demand three months' unpaid leave, just because "he's not taking any money from the company."

Leave for medical reasons

If you have hepatitis or malaria (both fairly common in Bombay), it's likely you'll run through your entire leave balance, and then some. Going by the book, you lose pay.

In reality, for serious illnesses, we usually try to accommodate the person's need for leave, and give him paid leave for his entire period of illness, provided:

• he has been with Merce for 2+ years,
• he joins back, and
• he produces some documentary certificates about his illness, e.g. blood test reports, doctor's certificate, etc

We will withhold crediting his bank account with his salary till he rejoins for work. This precaution is taken because we have had one or two cases who have gone on long leave citing personal problems and have never returned to the company. Therefore, for all periods of absence exceeding a month, we will begin to withhold salary for the employee, and this amount will be released to his account as soon as he rejoins.

This should not be construed as a policy statement saying that we will always grant paid medical leave, ad infinitum. We try to understand these things case by case and take a call. Also, for leave periods extending beyond 30 days, we discuss with the employee the option of half-pay for the entire leave period.

We have in the past also tried to cover medical expenses for employees, to the extent possible, for serious illnesses. The occasional stomach upset or influenza is usually not covered. Talk to your reporting officers.

Leave for wedding

As a "wedding gift" from the company, any employee getting married gets 20 (twenty) consecutive calendar days of paid leave from the company, irrespective of leave balance, and no changes are done to the employee's leave balance for this event.

Leave for weddings will need to be sanctioned well in advance. If the employee is taking a week's leave, then a few days' advance notice are sufficient. If she's taking the full 20 days' leave, then at least one month's advance notice is a must.

People sometimes don't want to take a long break for the wedding, but want a break for a holiday or honeymoon shortly thereafter. This is acceptable to us -- the only constraint is that the leave for wedding must commence within 90 days of the wedding itself.

Leave for wedding must be taken in one unbroken stretch -- the employee does not have the flexibility to take this leave in pieces over the next few years.

Maternity and paternity leave

Any female employee may avail of up to 90 days leave on the birth of a child or adoption of an infant of age less than two years. This leave is granted irrespective of the person's current leave balance, and no changes are done to the person's leave balance.

A male employee may avail of upto 30 days of paternity leave on the birth of a child or adoption of an infant of age less than two years.

Sometimes a new parent may want maternity leave not at the time of childbirth but shortly thereafter. This is more likely for paternity leave for the father, who may want leave when the mother rejoins for work at her workplace. This is acceptable -- the only constraint is that the paternity leave must commence within 90 days of the birth of the child or the date of adoption of the adopted child.

Maternity and paternity leave must be taken in one unbroken stretch -- it is not available in multiple pieces adding up to the total.

Compensatory off

If you are asked to work on a Sunday or holiday for any reason, then you will be given one day additional leave. This will be added to your leave balance. Since this is supposed to compensate for the extra work-day you have put in, it is called "compensatory off". It is not called complementary off or complimentary off.

Regarding compensatory off, the following rules apply:

• Compensatory off is only granted when you work on a holiday/Sunday because your reporting officer instructed you to do so. If you work on your own volition on a Sunday, normally you may not get compensatory off. To avoid confusion, if you feel you need to work on a Sunday and should be compensated, then discuss this with your reporting officer beforehand.
• If you are assigned to work at client site, then the holidays and weekly offs of that site and that organisation will apply. For instance, if you are assigned to provide on-site services at a client site, and the client observes Friday as weekly off instead of Sunday, then you will get compensatory off only if you work on a Friday, not if you work on a Sunday.
• You must ask for compensatory off. This is done by sending email to the reporting officer, cc to leaveapp@merceworld.com, telling him which holiday you worked on, and asking him to sanction the compensatory off. If the reporting officer agrees, he will reply by email, retaining the cc, and the HR department will add one (or more) days to your leave balance. Note: the company has no obligation to automatically track your work timings and add compensatory offs to your leave balance unless you ask for them.
• Asking for compensatory off is different from asking for leave. The two are completely separate activities. If you have worked last Sunday, and want to take next Wednesday off, you cannot write
  

  I worked last Sunday, therefore please can you give me next Wednesday off as compensatory off?

  You will have to

  • write an email asking for a compensatory off to be granted for last Sunday, and
  • apply online on the employee leave portal, requesting leave next Wednesday.

  The first email will result in a day being added to your leave balance, and the application, if granted, will result in a day being subtracted from it. The two transactions are completely independent. You may ask for compensatory off for dozens of Sundays and holidays if you've worked on them, without taking a single day of leave. Your leave balance will show all these accumulated days of leave.

• Compensatory off will increase your leave balance subject to the rule of max leave balance. If you have 20 days in your leave balance now, and you are granted 5 days of compensatory off by your reporting officer, your leave balance will increase to 22, not 25. See the section above titled "Lapsing of leave balance".

Please remember to avail of this facility whenever you are asked to work on Sundays and holidays due to any work pressure.

Compensatory off for National Holidays

There are three National Holidays per year as per Government of India rules, which apply for all institutions and organisations. These are 26 Jan, 15 Aug, and 2 Oct.

If you are asked to work on any National Holiday, in office or at client site, you will be compensated by two days being added to your leave balance for each National Holiday when you had to work.

This will also be the only case when a compensatory off will increase your salary balance beyond the max limit of 22 days which we carry forward. Normally, an employee is not allowed to maintain leave balance greater than 22 days, but if an employee has worked on a National Holiday and his leave balance is already 21 or 22 days, then two days will be added to his leave balance even if this pushes the total above 22 days.

Disputes and calculation errors

Leave balance calculation errors happen, in spite of our attempts to be careful. When this happens, speak to your reporting officer, who can (and should) intercede with the HR Manager on your behalf. You can speak to the HR team directly, but if things do not get resolved to your satisfaction, then please do not leave it at that. Please approach your reporting officer; it's his job to help in clearing up all such issues. If he himself is confused about the rules, he can approach the company management for help, but he cannot ignore your request for assistance.

LEAVE FAQ

1. Assume that a person joins on 1 May. In that case, the person is not present on 1 April when leaves are added to leave balance. In that case, what will this person's leave balance be on, say, 2 May?

   Such a person will have zero leave balance on 2 May. Till 31 Sep, his leave balance will be zero. He will get about 9 days added to his leave balance on 1 October.

2. What happens if such a person wants two days leave in, say, June? Will he lose salary? Will it be unpaid leave?

   Yes. Unless (i) he's been with Merce for 2+ years, (ii) it's some sort of exceptional case and (iii) his reporting officer sanctions a negative leave balance.

3. How much leave will be added to such a person's balance on 1 October?

   Since this person joined on 1 May, and not 1 April, he will not get full 11 days leave added to his balance on 1 October. He will get five-sixth of 11 days, or about 9 days (well, exactly nine days). Thus, his leave balance on 1 October will become +11.

4. If a person joins on 1 April, how much leave will be there in his balance in, say, May?

   Zero. On the first day of a person's service with the company, his leave balance will always be zero. Leave will be credited on 1 April for those who have been in service on 31 Mar and on 1 October for those who have been in service on 30 September.. Therefore, if a person joins on 1 April, his leave balance will remain zero till 1 October.

5. How is leave calculated for a person on probation?

   For such officers, two days of leave during the probation period are paid. The third day onwards, leave is unpaid.

6. Suppose a person joins on 1 May, and has three months of probation. Therefore, his probation period ends on 31 July. What will be his leave balance on 1 August?

   Zero. His leave balance will remain zero till 1 October.

7. How much leave will be added to such a person's leave balance on 1 October? He joined on 1 May but his position was confirmed on 1 August.

   The date of confirmation is taken as the date from which leave will be credited. Therefore, for such an officer, his period of service for leave calculation purposes will be taken as two months (August and September) and on 1 October, two-sixth of 11 days leave will be added to his balance.

8. What is the range in which leave balance of an officer may vary? What is the lowest and highest leave balance an officer may have?

   The lowest leave balance permitted is 0 (zero).

   The highest leave balance possible is +22 (plus twenty two). This can happen for people who never take any leave year after year. If they have, say, 15 days in their leave balance on 1 April, and they've been in service for a long time, then the system will attempt to add 11 days to their balance on 1 April. However, since 15+11 = 26, the system will cap the figure at +22. This officer will lose the benefit of four days leave. We do not permit any leave balance to accumulate more than 22 days in it.

9. When a person works on a Sunday or holiday, what happens to his leave balance?

   Strictly speaking, nothing. He has to work on a Sunday, and then request his reporting officer for a compensatory off. If the reporting officer grants it, then and only then, his leave balance is incremented by one. If the employee does not ask for compensatory off, or if his request is not granted, then nothing changes in his leave balance.

10. If a person takes, say, two weeks leave at a stretch, how many days' leave is subtracted from his balance?

    Only the number of working days in that two-week stretch is decremented from his leave balance. Sundays and holidays are not counted. The second and fourth Saturdays are not counted either.

11. What's the rule for Saturdays for various officers? Is Saturday a holiday or not?
    • For engineers on on-site postings at client sites, their Saturdays are working if their client works six days a week. In those cases, they can claim comp-off for the second and fourth Saturdays.
    • For engineers on on-site postings, if their client does not ask them to report for work on the first, third or fifth Saturday of any month, the engineer must report for work at Merce office. This is not optional. If they do not report for work, it will be deemed as leave without permission, i.e. one day's pay will be deducted and the incident will go on record for possible future disciplinary action.
    • For engineers who are not on on-site postings, second and fourth Saturdays are holidays.

    That about covers the Saturday rule for all employees.

12. I want leave for two days, and I had sent an email to my reporting officer, with a cc to leaveapp, asking for leave. I had sent this leave five days in advance. Why am I now losing salary for those two days?

    Your reporting officer did not respond to your email, granting you leave. Therefore, your leave was as good as unprofessional absenteeism. Your privilege leave is not privilege leave until your reporting officer sanctions it. If your reporting officer is busy and fails to clear it, then it is your responsibility to follow up with him/her and get the response from him/her on email. Without that, your absence is treated as unpaid absenteeism, irrespective of how much leave is present in your leave balance.

Update

2 Mar 2013 Updated to reduce wedding leave from 30 days to 20, and paternity leave from 90 days to 30. All employees currently availing of such leaves on the dates of this change will continue to enjoy their leaves as per the old rules. Anyone applying for leave in either of these two categories such that their leave is supposed to commence after this date will get leave as per the new rules.

10 Feb 2016 Updated to clarify policies about

1. leave balance during probation: you get two days paid leave during probation,
2. Saturdays: policies are now uniform for on-site and office-based employees, and
3. negative leave balance: by default, this is not supported any more