Create a parental leave time off policy

How to create and configure parental leave time off policies such as maternity, paternity, adoption, or child bereavement.

Daniels Korens avatar
Written by Daniels Korens
Updated over a week ago

An employee may be allowed time off related to a parental event, such as childbirth, adoption, or bereavement. An employee will receive this allowance once per event. You can set this type of time off in Sage HR.

📌TIP: Below are some examples of types of parental leave you may want to create:

  • Maternity leave based on expected due date

  • Maternity leave based on the actual date of birth of their child - This is useful if an employee's child has been born early or you are adding parental leave retrospectively

  • Paternity leave based on the actual date of birth of their child - Typically parental leave is taken after the child is born

  • Parental leave based on the date of adoption


Create a parental leave policy

The first step is to create an event-based time off policy that will be for parental leave.

  1. Logged in as an Admin, click on your name on the top right, then click Settings.

  2. On the settings menu, click Time off, then click Policies.

  3. Click Add new policy.

  4. Enter a name for the policy e.g. Maternity leave. If required you can also enter a description.

  5. Select the allocate option accrue based on an event.


  6. Select the number of days as an allowance, for example 20 days.

  7. By default Calendar settings is selected, where you can:

    • Enter what the default working hours are.

    • Select whether you want weekends to count as work days - When enabled, all time off requests falling on weekend days will be counted against the time off policy allowance.

      📎NOTE: Weekends are determined by an employee's employment status, where you can override default weekend days e.g. make Monday and Tuesday someone's weekend days.

    • Select whether you want public holidays to count as workdays - When enabled, all time off requests falling on public holidays will be counted against the time off policy allowance.

  8. Select the type of event that will trigger the allocation of the allowance. The options available are:

    • Expected child due date

    • Child date of birth

    • Child date of adoption

    • Child date of death


      📎NOTE: These are fields entered when a record of a child is created on an employee's profile.

  9. You can choose whether a leave must start before the event (childbirth, adoption, etc) and the expiration date using the settings under Conditions.

    • Leave must start within __ days prior to the event - Applicable for maternity leave when the mother must start the leave before the child's estimated due date.

    • Expire allowance __ days after the event - Most of the parental leaves must be taken within a period of time. As these policies do not reset based on the calendar or the employee start date, the policy will expire some time after the event takes place.

    • Allow employee to return to work up to __ days during leave (KIT DAYS) - An employee can return to work for a certain amount of days without losing entitlement to the rest of their leave duration. These are known as Keeping In Touch (KIT) days


  10. When finished, click Create.

    ⚠️CAUTION: As this is an event-based policy, after you create it, some settings in this policy can't be edited.

  11. You can assign employees at this point or click Cancel and assign them later.


Assign employees for parental leave

As with other time off policies, you can select which employees are eligible for it.

  1. Click on your name on the top right, then click Settings.

  2. On the settings menu, click Time off, then click Policies.

  3. On the list of time off policies, click the Eligibility button alongside the relevant policy.


  4. Select the relevant employee(s) then click Save.

  5. One more step is needed so this employee may be entitled to this leave, the employee must have a child record added to their profile. This can be added via the Personal tab of an employee's profile.


Request parental leave

Now the employee is eligible for parental leave in Sage HR, they or an admin/manager can request this type of leave when appropriate.


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