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Premium and Premium Plus customers, Graphite provides a HR
Consultation Service. As part of our regular monthly review
in HR e-ssentials Graphite HRM provides you with an insight
into the type of queries we get through this consultation
service.
Q: Under the Parental Leave
Acts 1998 – 2006 we are aware that we are obliged to permit
an employee to break down their parental leave entitlements
into periods of not less than six weeks at a time should they
wish. However, where an employee is permitted to avail of
leave for six weeks, can we restrict when they can next apply
for a period of parental leave?
A: Under the
2006 Act, an employee is entitled to break up their leave
into separate six weeks blocks, or may agree a more favourable
arrangement with their employer where this suits the parties.
The legislation does permit an employer, however, to place
restrictions on an employee when leave is granted in this
manner. Where an employee is permitted to break their leave,
the Act sets out that the employee will not be entitled to
take a further period of parental leave unless a period of
10 weeks has elapsed since the previous period of leave. It
should be noted that in this restriction only applies where
both periods of leave are requested in respect of the same
child. It is also worth noting that the employer and employee
may agree more favourable terms where this is appropriate.
Graphite is currently updating Chapter 11 Leave of Absence,
of Personnel Policies and
Procedures – the Law in Perspective.
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Q: An employee has asked if
he can have force majeure leave to attend to his son’s first
week of school. He needs to leave at 12.00 each day in the
first week of school, to pick him up and bring him home.
A: No you should
not use force majeure leave entitlements for this type of
request. Force majeure leave is only intended for attending
to the urgent and immediate illness or injury of a designated
relative. (See Working Time & Leave Arrangements / HR
How to – How to Manage Force Majeure Leave in the client zone).
Instead consider the following two options:
1. Let the employee use his/her annual leave for this time
off, and deduct from their annual leave entitlement, as you
would other annual leave requests.
2. Allow the parent to use their parental leave allocation,
(check that they have not used all their entitlement of 14
weeks), and allow them to break it down over ½-days
or the number of hours they need.
However, please note that if you use the latter option, you
are setting a precedent in the organisation for a high level
of flexibility in the uptake of parental leave, and you will
have to treat similar requests of this kind in a consistent
manner.
In general taking days off to match their children’s’ time-off
from school is a major problem for both parents and management.
If you have a large number of parents working for your organisation,
you need to consider the increased difficulty in cover at
this time of year.
To read more about the Organisation of Working Time Act,
and how to establish a Working Time Policy, please see Chapter
1, Conditions of Employment, of Personnel
Policies and Procedures – the Law in Perspective.
Disclaimer - This is not
a legal service, all suggestions will be based on HR best
practice.
You should seek independent legal advice before making any
decisions.
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