Setup Considerations: Leave of Absence

What It Is

Workday leave of absence functionality enables:

Workers to record when they’re taking leave from work with an estimated or flexible end date.

Administrators to manage the impacts a leave of absence can have on other areas of Workday and other systems. Example: Headcount Reporting or Payroll.

Business Benefits

You can use Workday leave of absence functionality to:

Track costs as you can use reports to view how much absenteeism is costing your organization and calculate your absence liability.

Minimize risks as you ensure that your leave policies are consistent with country-specific requirements.

Improve efficiency in your organization as managers can use reports, predict trends, and plan resources accordingly.

Integrate with a Payroll solution to enable you to process payments to workers on leave.

Streamline the process of moving workers from one leave type to another. Example: Paid to unpaid maternity leave.

Create a variety of leave types and families that can suit the specific requirements of your organization. This functionality improves the user experience as they can quickly find the correct leave type for their request.

Use Cases

Enable workers to view and request some types of leave, but not others.

Place workers on, and return them from, a leave of absence.

Request documentation, other required information, or both from workers when they enter leave requests.

Import large volumes of leave of absence events into Workday.

Questions to Consider

When deciding if you should create a time off or leave of absence, consider:

Question	Consideration
When do you expect your workers to return to work?	You can create: A time off for absences that have a short duration with a known return to work date. Workday creates a time off request for each day a worker expects to be off work. Example: Use annual leave for a vacation with a planned return date. A leave of absence for longer durations, or for time away from work with an estimated end date. Example: Use parental leave for new parents.
How do you want your workers status to display?	You can create: A time off if you want your workers' status to remain unchanged. A leave of absence if you want your worker's status to display as On Leave . You can configure if this status displays on each leave type. Example: You can configure Workday to hide workers on leave from search.
How do you want to restrict a worker's absence balance?	You can create: A time off if you want your worker to accrue their balance over time. Example: Paid sick leave can accrue over a period to enable workers to take up to 10 days per year. A leave of absence if no accrual is necessary. Leave Types have an entitlement that each eligible worker can use. Example: You grant parental leave based on your worker's eligibility and company requirements.
How do you want your workers to return to work?	You can create: A time off if you want a worker to return to work without their manager approving it. A leave of absence if managers must ensure that a worker's leave of absence ends before they can return to work. A worker's status displays as On Leave until their manager returns them to work.
What periods do you use when tracking absences?	You can create: A time off if you want your workers to accrue their balance within a specified period. The period schedule used for Time Off aligns with the schedule you use for Payroll. A leave of absence if the balance period is rolling backwards or forwards from the effective date of the leave, or first date of the leave.

When setting up leaves of absence, consider:

Question	Consideration
What details do you want your workers to enter when requesting a leave of absence?	When setting up leave of absence types, you can: Create rules to display what data is necessary for each leave type request. Managers can use this information to ensure that their workers complete their requests correctly. Include forms that your organization requires to secure reimbursement from the government. Example: Workday sends government forms to a worker who enters a parental leave request. Configure reasons for workers to select when they're entering an absence request. You can view the reason usage count in your reports to predict trends and plan resources. Configure additional fields that a worker completes when entering a leave of absence request. You can use Workday-delivered fields or add custom fields and label overrides for these fields. Example: Child's Birth Date. You can configure your leave type to make these fields obligatory. You can also hide these fields from a worker. When a reviewer checks the request, Workday displays the hidden fields. If the hidden field requires a value, the reviewer enters the value.
How do you want to pay your workers when they are on leave?	You can: Configure cascading leaves of absence that have different rates of pay over the duration of the leaves. Select which leaves of absence have a payroll effect. Your payroll administrator can configure rules for how you pay your worker who is on leave. You can create separate leave types when a worker changes from 1 payment rate to a different rate. You can also create cascading leaves to move a worker from 1 leave to the other when their balance expires.
Which leave types do you want to make available to your workers?	You can create eligibility rules to restrict access to leave types. You can also add leave types to security segments to ensure that workers can only view leave types for which they’re eligible. Example: Restrict eligibility to full-time workers, or require that workers work at least 250 hours in the last 12 months.
How do you want to display leave types?	You can group leave types together in leave families. Workers can select from relevant leave types in these categories when entering a leave request. This functionality improves the user experience as they can quickly find the correct leave type for their request. Workday delivers country-specific leave families and their respective leave types. Example: Create 1 leave family called Company Leave for disability and bereavement leave, and another called Family Leave for maternity and parental care leaves. You can also group leave types for a specific country or region together in a leave family.
How do you want to inform your workers about their request status?	When you set up leaves of absence, workers can use self-service tasks to view the status of their requests. You can also create validation messages to alert workers as they enter their request. Example: You can display an alert when workers enter leave requests that exceed their leave balance.
Which nonwork days do you want to include in your leave balances?	You can configure which days to include in your workers leave balances. Example: A worker requests study leave over months in which there are national holidays. You can configure your leave type to include, or exclude, holidays when deducting the leave balance.
How do your workers return to work after a leave of absence?	You can configure Workday to alert your managers when their workers are returning from leave. Workers can send their own return from leave requests using the employee self-service tasks. Workday also increases efficiency by enabling you to return a group of workers from leave.
How do you identify which workers are on leave?	You can display (On Leave) after the worker’s name. If your worker has more than 1 position and is taking leave from one, you can configure the notation to display beside that position. Example: A worker holds 3 positions: Professor, researcher, and physician. All of the leave types they’re eligible for are set to display the (On Leave) status if: They take a worker-based leave of absence (On Leave) displays after their name and 3 positions. They take a position-based leave from their professor position only (On Leave) displays after the professor position only.
How do you want to view the number of days a worker takes on leave?	You can create a report that displays all approved leaves for a worker. You can configure this report to display the number of days the worker is absent in a specific time frame. Example: Create a report to display the total number of sick days a worker takes over 6 months.
How do you want to correct approved leave of absence requests?	You can configure your business processes to enable managers to correct an approved leave of, or return from, absence request. Corrections trigger a notification to the Payroll Interface Partner of the worker's organization if the leave type has a payroll effect.
How do you want to create country-specific leave types?	You can use the Global Library report to view high-level descriptions of sample leave types.
How do you want to process entitlements during a leave of absence?	You can calculate entitlements from a leave family or a specific leave type. If the leave type is linked to other leave types or time offs, you can display the combined entitlement balance for the related leaves and time offs.
If you allow workers to go on partial leave of absence, how do you want them to request the leave?	You can configure leave types that: Enable workers to enter a leave percentage when requesting leave. Prorate leave units taken for workers when they request leave of absence, based on the leave percentage that they enter on the request.
How do you want your workers to accrue time off while on leave?	You can suspend a worker's accrual when they are on leave. Alternatively you can prorate the accrual for the period in which the worker is on leave.

Recommendations

Workday recommends that you:

Avoid configuring your accrual for a balance period when a worker is on leave, when you create a time off.

Create validations for leave types that track balances. These validations alert workers that they might not have the balance to complete their leave of absence request.

Use leave reasons and additional data functionality to provide necessary leave data to assist administration.

Requirements

Ensure that leave periods don't overlap for cascading leaves.

Limitations

Cascading leaves end one leave before starting the next one. It isn’t a continuous leave. This can cause issues when generating reports as it can display that the worker has taken more than 1 leave. Consider returning a worker from their existing leave, so that the subsequent cascaded leave is the only 1 present.

Workers must enter at least 1 day for a leave of absence request.

For privacy, you can't directly reference report fields related to the Leave Request Event business object in Workday Payroll calculations, such as the leave reason.

Workday Payroll doesn't support retro-pay calculation for multiple returns from leave in a single event. To return workers or correct returns from multiple leave request events, select only 1 leave request event at a time. Workday creates a separate leave return event for each leave request event. See:

Correct Return from Leave of Absence Requests

Return Workers from Leave

Workday Payroll for Canada doesn't support the ROE feature with cascading leaves of absence.

Workday Payroll for the UK doesn't support cascading leave types linked to statutory payments.

The maximum duration that you can set for a leave type is 50 years.

Leave types don’t support entitlements with an accrual. Set entitlements at the beginning of the leave event to deduct during the balance period of the leave type.

Use the same unit of time for any intermittent time off associated with a corresponding leave type.

Workday doesn't generate absence calculations with leave types that correspond with payroll calculations.

Workers remain On Leave
after termination, unless returned from leave during the termination process.

Tenant Setup

Select

Allow Job Overlap for Leave

to overlap workers in the same position when the incumbent starts a leave of absence. This setting automatically applies to any position filled by a worker who goes on leave.

Security

Users with access to the:

Set Up: Leave of Absence
domain in the Time Off and Leave functional area can create types of leave. They can also control access to the leave types by creating rules.

Set Up: Maintain Additional Fields
domain in the System functional area can add, change, remove, and view additional fields for Absence in Workday.

You can create eligibility rules to restrict access to leave types. You can also add leave types to security segments to ensure that eligible workers can view leave types.

Configure the Request Leave of Absence
business process to enable users to place other workers on leave or correct leave requests.

Users with access to an initiating security group for the Request Return from Leave of Absence
business process can return workers from a leave of absence.

Business Processes

Business Process	Considerations
Request Leave Of Absence	You can add steps to this business process to: Request supporting documentation when a worker is entering a request. Dynamically generate editable documents when a worker is entering a request. Configure who can approve leave requests and correct leave end dates if they change. Enable users to request a change to a worker's compensation, benefits, or both, when they take a leave of absence or return from leave. Enable users to bulk load leave of absence events.
Request Return from Leave of Absence	You can add steps to this business process to: Enable workers to request a return from a leave of absence on behalf of someone. Enable users to update service dates manually, such as the continuous service date. Enable users to request a change to the compensation and/ or benefits of a worker when the worker takes a leave of absence or returns from leave. Enable users to bulk load request return from leave of absence events. Enable editable documents to be dynamically generated when a worker requests a return from a leave of absence.
Termination	Add automated leave processing after the completion step to enable you to terminate workers while they're on leave.

Reporting

Reports or Dashboards	Considerations
All Leave Families	Use this report to view all the leave families that you can use to group leave types so that workers can select them when requesting leave of absence.
All Leave Type Security Segments View Leave Type Security Segment	Use these reports to view the leave types to which workers have access.
Leave Results for Worker (includes leave balance) Leave Results for Organization (includes leave balances) Maintain Worker Documents	Use these reports to predict trends and plan for costs of workers being on a leave of absence.
Team Absence Calendar	Use this report to analyze absence requests so that you can better manage team resources.
View Leave Family	Use this report to view a specific leave of absence family. Details include: Each leave type that is part of the leave family. If the leave family is active. Its availability to workers in each location. Effects on payroll processing. Usage count.
View Leave of Absence Rule	View the condition rules that make up a specific leave of absence rule.
View Leave Type	Use this report to view the eligibility criteria and leave impacts for a specific leave type.
View Worker Leave of Absence Eligibility by Organization	Use this report to view leave of absence eligibility details for active workers within the selected organizations, as of the current day.
Workers on Leave	You can identify workers on leave and check that any existing ongoing payments they have are still applicable during the leave.
Workers Returned from Leave Workers Returning from Leave	You can identify workers that returned or are returning from leave and check that you've correctly configured payroll for them.

Integrations

Web Services	Consideration
Get Leave Families Put Leave Family	Use these web services to view existing, or upload your own leave families.
Get Leave Type Reasons Put Leave Type Reason	Use these web services to view existing, or upload your own reasons for a leave of absence.
Get Leave Types Put Leave Type	Use these web services to view existing, or upload your own leave types.
Import Request Leave of Absence Events	Use this web service to: Load large volumes of request leave of absence events in batches. Correct multiple request leave of absence events for workers. Optionally, add a comment for each request leave of absence event.
Import Request Return from Leave of Absence Events	Use this web service to: Load large volumes of request return from leave of absence events in batches. Correct multiple request return from leave of absence events for workers. Add a comment for each request return from leave of absence event.
Request Leave of Absence	Use to enter new, or correct existing, leave of absence requests.
Request Return from Leave of Absence	Use this web service to request a worker's return to work from a leave of absence.

Connections and Touchpoints

Touchpoint	Consideration
Benefits	Workday Benefits can reference leaves of absences to change the employee's benefit elections, report a life event, and update the benefit elections accordingly.
Payroll	When a worker is on a leave with payroll effect enabled, Workday processes them as on leave. Workday processes workers with other leave types as active. You can define different payroll processing rules for workers who are on leave. Workday Payroll also provides several features that enable you to meet regulatory reporting requirements for workers on leave.
Talent	Workday Talent removes workers from the type of leave from the employee reviews and feedback processes.
Time Off	Workday can suspend accruals when a worker is on a leave of absence.
Time Tracking	Workers can enter and submit time through Workday Time Tracking while they're on leave. You can also create a time validation to prevent submission.

Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.