Avoid confusions: New Legislation – Sick Leave 10 days per year
From July 24, 2021 employee’s sick leave has gone up from 5 days to 10 days per year, and this will happen for any employee who reaches either their 6-month anniversary or yearly anniversary with an employer.
This doesn’t mean that employees will start getting five more sick days per year starting from July 24, 2021. For example, if an employee’s anniversary date is on July 23, you get new 5 sick days for the coming year, so an employee won’t get an increase until July 23, 2022. In addition, if you are a new employee, you will be entitled to 10 sick days as soon as you become entitled to sick leave.
Employees can spend sick leave when they are unwell or injured and need to care for family members who are ill or depend on them for care.
If an employee was already allotted ten or more sick days a year, they would not be affected directly by this change in the minimum number of sick days.
Sick leave entitlement is not pro-rated, which means that you would still get ten sick days per year even if you work part-time three days a week. Therefore, everyone can accumulate up to 20 sick days a year.
Employees wouldn’t be eligible for payment of sick leave if the day they were sick wasn’t a day they would have otherwise worked.
Sick leave is defined as days rather than hours. This means that if an employee works for part of the day and then goes home sick, this may be counted as using a whole sick day, no matter how much of the day they have worked. However, in some cases If an employee works a half-day then goes home sick, their employer could agree to only deduct a half-day of sick leave (which would be better for the employee). Payment for this half sick leave day would be half of their daily pay or average daily pay.