Leave policy template for Indian offices

This page is an illustrative leave-policy template for Indian offices. It is not legal advice, not a claim that this text is compliant in every state or establishment, and not a certified handbook. Entitlements and procedures can vary by employer policy, establishment type, applicable state rules, applicable law, and employment terms. Pending SME review. Do not issue this outline unchanged.

Fill every placeholder from your real rules. Do not invent state quotas or copy a round number because it looks familiar. Sandwich-leave mechanics must not be restated or contradicted here; point to the live sandwich-leave guide and to the sandwich clause in the version you actually issue after review.

Operational leave in software — applications, balances, approvals, cancellation requests, configurable policies, granted credits, holiday calendars — is described on Dayzen leave management. Configuration should follow this chapter once you have issued it, not the reverse.

1. Purpose

State that the policy explains how employees apply for time away, how balances work, and how leave meets attendance and payroll inputs. Name the entities and locations covered. Name the owner of amendments and the effective date. Say that attendance punches and regularization are covered in the attendance policy, not duplicated here.

2. Eligibility

Who accrues or is allotted which types: confirmed employees, probationers, trainees, part-time staff, if you include them. Joining and exit proration is a company choice unless a binding instrument you have reviewed says otherwise. Write whether leave is available from day one, after confirmation, or after a named waiting period. Write whether unused leave is handled at exit in this chapter or only by reference to Full and Final process owners. Do not paste a national probation-leave formula into the blank.

3. Leave categories

List the types you actually run. For conceptual differences among Casual, Sick, and Earned (and privilege as a name some offices use for earned), point to casual versus sick versus earned leave rather than inventing a quota grid in this template. Add other types you use (compensatory off, bereavement, and so on) as named headings with “as per the issued annex.” Maternity, paternity, and similar categories can be statutory, policy, or both depending on what applies to you — this template does not fill those days.

Each type in the issued policy should state, at minimum: who is eligible, how it is credited (allotment or accrual), notice, documentation, whether half-days are allowed, and year-end treatment or a pointer to the year-end section.

4. Application, approval, and cancellation

Write the path:

1. Employee applies in the system of record (not only a chat), naming dates, type, and half-day if used.
2. Named approver acts within a published time.
3. HR or a coordinator chases breaches; they do not silently approve for a manager who is travelling unless you wrote a delegation.
4. Cancellation: who may request, until when, and whether a used day after freeze can return to balance in this period or only next cycle.

Pending applications that overlap the pay period must be decided before leave close. Late approvals are an exception path: hold the payslip, next cycle, or refuse for this period. Pick one.

5. Documentation

Map documents to types (for example, a medical certificate after a named stretch of sick leave — as your rule). State where documents are stored and who may see them. Do not invent a government form number. If no document is required for a type, say “none” so managers stop asking for theatre.

6. Holidays and weekly offs

Holidays are calendar rest from the published list. Weekly offs are rostered rest. Neither spends a leave balance when taken as rest. Point to the holiday calendar and to the attendance policy for weekly-off patterns. Restricted holidays, if you use them, need a one-line rule (choose N from a list, or similar) in the issued annex.

For how those rest days differ from leave balances in operations, see holidays, weekly offs, and leave balances.

7. Sandwich leave (pointer only)

If a leave application touches intervening holidays or weekly offs, apply the sandwich rule in the company’s issued leave policy as reviewed for your entities. Employees and managers should read the public explanation on the sandwich-leave guide. This template does not restate those mechanics and must not contradict that guide. Do not add homemade sandwich examples in this chapter.

8. Half-day leave

If you allow half-days, name morning versus afternoon against the same shift windows attendance uses. Deduction is usually a fraction of a unit (often 0.5) as operating math, not a legal constant. Distinguish half-day leave (balance spent) from half-day attendance (presence outcome) — see half-day attendance versus leave. Do not let a short punch spend leave unless the employee applied or policy converts it in a published way.

9. Leave without pay (LWP)

LWP (or an equivalent unpaid code) is a policy option for absence when paid balances do not apply or are exhausted, or when the type is not allowed. It is not described here as a statute that every employer must offer as a named product. Write when someone may apply for unpaid days, when unpaid time is assigned after freeze because no leave was approved, and how that input reaches payroll. Do not treat LWP and attendance LOP as interchangeable slang without mapping both to one payroll code.

10. Year-end: carry, lapse, encashment (placeholders)

Do not invent numbers in this template. Point to the sibling article on leave carry-forward, lapse, and encashment for the mechanics conversation, then fill your actual caps and dates in the issued annex after review. Exit encashment at Full and Final is a separate process; do not collapse it into the in-service year-end paragraph unless your reviewer says they are the same for your types.

Compensatory off expiry, if you run that credit, belongs in the compensatory-off clause — see compensatory off explained — not as a silent extra line under earned leave.

11. Joining and exit proration

Write the company choice: monthly accrual from date of joining, first-month half credit, no leave in month of joining, and what happens to negative balances or advance leave at resignation. These are design decisions until applicable rules say otherwise. Name the cutoff for applying leave in the notice period (allowed, manager discretion, or blocked except sick).

Mid-month joiners should appear in leave self-service only after the employee record exists; otherwise applications will be raised on a nickname and never hit payroll. Mid-month exits should stop attracting auto-absent on the attendance calendar so leave close is not spent reversing false LOP. Tie both to the same identity the attendance policy uses.

11a. Public communication of balances

State where employees see current balances (self-service, not a side spreadsheet), how often credits post (monthly accrual date or annual allotment date), and that the payslip leave line — if you print one — is not a second ledger. When the screen and the PDF disagree, name which one wins until corrected. Do not promise a mobile view you do not operate.

Managers need a team view of pending applications, not a private stash of “I already said yes.” Delegation for leave when the manager is on leave should be named (alternate approver, skip-level, or HR queue). Unowned queues are how festival weeks break freeze.

12. Misuse

Pattern examples you will actually act on: repeated same-day casual leave against a published cap, certificates that do not match dates, applying one type to cover another after refusal. State the process (warning, conversion to unpaid, or other measures you lawfully use) without theatrical language. Misuse clauses do not replace documentation of the attendance record.

Pattern examples you will not treat as misconduct without a written rule: applying on a day the roster later changed, or cancelling because a client meeting moved. Those are process misses, not theft of leave. Keep the tone operational so the clause is usable.

13. Acknowledgement

A short acknowledgement that the employee has read the leave types, application path, sandwich pointer, half-day rule, and year-end annex. Collect it on joining and on each material revision. Acknowledgement records notice; it does not cure an unlawful clause.

---

Issue only the version you have filled and reviewed. Keep sandwich mechanics on the sandwich guide. Keep CL/SL/EL explanations on the types article. Keep year-end numbers out of this skeleton until they are yours. Dayzen can apply half-day leave with a deduction preview and hold configurable balances; that does not make this template law. This article remains a draft pending SME review.

When you train managers, walk one joining example, one festival-week example, and one unpaid example — not a lecture on every type. If the system allows a type the PDF forbids, freeze month will follow the system. Reconcile codes to this chapter on every revision date, and keep the acknowledgement tied to that date. A leave policy that cannot be applied on a phone will be replaced by WhatsApp, and WhatsApp will not survive payroll close.