Setup Considerations: Pay for Workers on Leave
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of pay for workers on leave. It explains:
- Why to set it up.
- How it fits into the rest of Workday.
- Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
- Security requirements and business process configurations.
- Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.
What It Is
You can process payroll for workers on leave by defining:
- Which leave types impact their payroll.
- Which earnings to pay during the leave.
- Which deductions to calculate and put into arrears during the leave.
- When to pay earnings.
Processing payments to workers on leave also includes related compliance calculations and preparing for regulatory reporting.
Business Benefits
Workday Payroll seamlessly integrates with Workday Absence Management to enable you to process payments to workers on leave based on absence data entered by your HR partners.
Workday also helps you comply with country-specific requirements by:
- Calculating taxes on the payments.
- Streamlining report preparation within 1 system.
Use Cases
You can process payments to workers on leave for:
- Benefit and retirement deductions.
- Bereavement.
- Earnings differences due to statutory leave (FRA, UK).
- Multiple jobs (CAN, USA).
- Parental or family leave.
- Partial pay for a sabbatical leave.
- Short-term disability.
- Sick leave (CAN, UK, USA).
You can also process payroll for workers who move from 1 leave type to another, such as from paid to unpaid parental leave.
Questions to Consider
Questions | Considerations |
|---|---|
Which earnings or deductions do you need to process for workers on leave? | For workers on leave with payroll effect, Workday applies eligibility criteria to automatically process:
For Payroll for Canada and the U.S., for workers with multiple jobs and leave types that are:
|
Which periods of employment do you want bonuses to cover for workers on leave? (USA) | You can configure Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) bonuses to:
|
Do you need to process reclassification leaves? (FRA) | You can configure Workday to process reclassification leaves and:
|
Which leave types are you processing? (AUS, FRA, UK) | For payroll for Australia, you can create leave types for statutory leave payments. Make sure to provide all information required for the leave type. For Payroll for France, you can report leave types in the DSN by mapping Workday leave types to those declared in the DSN. For Payroll for the UK, you can create leave types for statutory leave payments. Make sure to provide all information required for the leave type. Examples:
Workday calculates statutory payments based on completed whole weeks within the pay period. Workday doesn't pay a partial week until that week is complete in a following pay period. |
What are the reporting requirements for workers on leave? (AUS, CAN, UK) | For Payroll for Australia, to meet reporting requirements, use the View STP Reporting Categories task to map the pay components for each of your leave types to the correct corresponding Single Touch Payroll (STP) category. For Payroll for Canada, Workday populates Record of Employment (ROE) data for workers:
You can create an ROE for those workers using the Create ROE Data for Events task.For payroll for the UK, to meet the legal requirements for reporting payroll data and National Insurance (NI) contributions, you can:
Run UK RTI FPS task to launch an RTI FPS integration for each submission, in ascending order. Wait for the acceptance of each submission before sending the next one. |
How do you want to manage payslips and checks for workers on leave? (CAN, UK, USA) | For Payroll for Canada and the U.S., you can configure how many checks to provide to workers on leave when:
You can select Pay Component as the Proration Type for the Leave of Absence GTN with Tenant Override payroll proration event category on the Maintain Payroll Proration Override report. This setting enables you to generate 1 check for the whole pay period. You can't switch back to gross-to-net proration after you enable pay component proration and completed payroll. For Payroll for the UK, you can send paper versions of P60 forms to workers on leave who elect to receive paper copies of their payslips. |
Recommendations
To optimize performance, Workday recommends that you configure:
- Run categories using the most specific payroll processing status to identify workers to process. Example: UseOn Leave with One-time Payroll Inputinstead ofOn Leavewith thePayroll Input (Onetime) Exists for Pay Componentselection criteria.
- Pay components with eligibility criteria so that they only calculate for eligible workers. Example: Configure disability pay, or parental leave only for eligible workers.
Avoid inaccurate calculations and reporting by loading payroll history before placing workers on leave. For Payroll for the UK, also load year-to-date tax amounts for each statutory type.
For Payroll for the UK, configure Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) as time off rather than leaves of absence to enter different pay rates for each leave period. Only create a leave type for SSP to manage long-term sickness, which also requires a time off configuration for short-term sickness.
Requirements
For Payroll for Canada, France, the UK, and the U.S, configure leave types to have payroll effect in Workday Absence Management.
For Payroll for Australia, configure leave payment types for each leave type in Workday Absence management.
Configure run categories by:
- Including statuses for workers on leave when processing on- or off-cycle payments. Example:On Leave with One-time Payroll Input.
- Selecting which pay components to calculate for those workers. Example: Disability pay (CAN, FRA, UK).
- Selecting which pay components to calculate for those workers. Example: Disability pay or 401K (USA).
- Selecting which pay components to calculated for those worker. Example: Parental leave (AUS).
- Selecting specific statuses before paying workers that have multiple jobs. Example: You end their additional jobs and their primary job remains active (CAN, USA).
To apply pay component proration to an earning for workers on leave, set up the earning as position-based when you use a position-based leave.
Limitations
You can't directly reference report fields related to the Leave Request Event business object in Workday Payroll calculations, such as the leave reason.
Payroll for Canada doesn't support the ROE feature with cascading leaves of absence.
For Payroll for Canada, all leave types trigger ROEs, including the ones without payroll effect enabled in Workday Absence Management. Example: Paid leave.
Payroll for the UK doesn't support cascading leave types linked to statutory payments.
For Payroll for France, Workday considers workers on therapeutic leave as still active. To ensure accurate calculations and DSN reporting, configure this leave type using a combination of:
- A leave type without payroll effect to use when placing the worker on part-time therapeutic leave.
- A time off plan to represent the actual time that the worker isn't at work due to the leave.
Tenant Setup
On the
Edit Tenant Setup - Payroll
task, you can disable processing pay components with retro differences for workers on leave in the scope of the run category. Workday then uses your pay component configuration from the Nonactive (On Cycle, On Demand Replacement)
tab on the run category when processing retro events.Security
Domains | Considerations |
|---|---|
Process: P60 (Reports) - UK and Process: P60 (Run) - UK in the UK Payroll functional area. | Enables you to create P60 forms, including paper versions, for workers on leave. |
Set Up: Payroll - Company Specific (Taxes) - USA in the USA Payroll functional area. | Enables you to configure state and local taxes such as for new state medical leaves. |
Set Up: Payroll - FRA in the FRA Payroll functional area. | Enables you to map leaves from Workday Absence Management to rubric values required for DSN reporting. |
Set Up: Payroll (ROE) - CAN in the CAN Payroll functional area. | Enables you to map Service Canada reason codes to event types for recording leaves of absence. |
Set Up: Payroll (Calculations - Payroll Specific) in the Core Payroll functional area. | Enables you to configure payroll-specific components such as earnings and deductions to calculate for workers on leave. |
Set Up: Payroll (Reporting) in the Core Payroll functional area. | Enables you to configure reporting options related to payslip printing. |
Set Up: Settlement in the Banking and Settlement functional area. | Enables you to configure settlement options related to payslip printing. |
Set Up: Tenant Setup - Payroll in the System functional area. | Enables you to configure tenant-wide parameters. |
Business Processes
Business Processes | Considerations |
|---|---|
Assign Costing Allocation
| Configure as a subprocess of the Request Leave of Absence business process to allocate costs for positions on leave.
You can't use this subprocess to allocate costs for workers on leave. Add a step condition to the Request Leave of Absence business process to skip costing for worker-based leaves. Otherwise, worker-based leave requests stop the business process and you need to cancel them. |
Request Leave of Absence
Request Return from Leave of Absence | Configure a To Do step on the Request Leave of Absence business process to enable workers to change their printing options. Example: Workers can elect to receive printed copies of their payslips or year-end forms while on leave. |
Reporting
Reports or Dashboards | Considerations |
|---|---|
All Pay Results Blocking Tenant Proration Option Changes (CAN, UK, USA) | Use to identify and complete any in-progress payroll or retro payroll results before enabling pay component proration on the Maintain Payroll Proration Override report. |
Tenant Analyzer
| Use to verify your run category configuration against Workday recommendations for workers on leave to optimize performance. |
Workers on Leave
| Use to identify workers on leave and check that any existing ongoing payments they have are still applicable during the leave. |
Workers Returning from Leave
| Use to identify workers that returned from leave and check that you configure payroll correctly for them. |
Integrations
No impacts.
Connections and Touchpoints
Features | Considerations |
|---|---|
Absence Management | Workday Payroll processes leave types configured in Workday Absence Management with payroll effect enabled.
When configuring cascading leaves, make sure that the leave periods don't overlap. |
Arrears | You can recoup arrears for pay components processed for workers on leave. You can also reduce arrears balance with a payroll input, such as when workers pay deductions using personal checks. Configure run categories so that workers on leave have a pay result that Workday can use to track arrears. |
Pay components | Workday applies pay component eligibility criteria when processing payments for workers on leave. When workers go on leave midperiod, Workday creates multiple subperiods, and you can configure:
|
Payroll input | You can use payroll inputs to override the base pay for workers on leave. Example: Configure a payroll input to pay a reduced amount during the leave period instead of using proration. |
Retro pay calculations | You can process:
The retro pay calculation doesn't support multiple returns from leave in 1 leave event. To return workers or correct returns from multiple leave types, do so for each type in a separate event. |
Run categories | For Payroll for Australia, France, and the UK, run categories determine which pay components and workers to process on subperiod start dates. Workers have a nonactive status when they're on leave with payroll effect for the entire pay period. Workday applies the configuration from the Nonactive (On Cycle, On Demand Replacement) tab to process non-active workers .For Payroll for Canada and the U.S., run categories and eligibility determine which pay components and workers to process on subperiod start dates. Single-job workers have a nonactive status when they're on leave with payroll effect for the entire pay period. When they have multiple jobs, Workday considers them as nonactive when they're either on a:
Workday applies the configuration from the Nonactive (On Cycle, On Demand Replacement) tab on the run category to process non-active workers.For all countries, when workers are on leave without payroll effect enabled, Workday Payroll considers them active, and ignores these tabs on the run category:
|
Tax configuration (USA) | Workday delivers compliance updates that you can use to calculate pay for workers on leave. Some delivered configurations require that you enable it for the company. Example: To use a new state medical leave, configure it in the Other section of the Edit Company State and Local US Tax Reporting task. |
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. |
Union rates (USA) | Workday enables you to define tax rates for unions and override default tax authorities for paid family and medical leave. You can enter a unique rate in the Union Rate tab of the Edit Company State and Local US Tax Reporting task. |
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.