New law - Accrual of paid leave in the event of sick leave

Before you get started

Law no. 2024-364 of April 22, 2024, containing various provisions for adapting to the European Union law, modifies the accrual of paid leave in France in the event of sick leave. This article explains the contents of the law and the new provisions you need to apply as an employer.

This help page focuses on what needs to be changed in Timmi Absences to comply with this new regulation.

Work-related sick leave

The law states: for work-related sick leave, your employees will continue to earn 2.5 working days of paid leave per month. Previously, your employees would not earn paid leave after one year, but this limit no longer exists.

ℹ️ To view your adjustment rules, go to Settings > Regulations > Accrual. Adjustment rules are marked with a "Regul > Prorata" dot. 

ℹ️ The default accounts in Timmi Absences for work-related sick leave are:

• Work accident
• Commuting accident (treated as a work accident)
• Work-related illness

 

Non-work related sick leave

The law states: for non-work related sick leave, the employee accrues 2 working days of paid leave per month of absence, i.e. 24 working days if they have been absent for the entire accrual period.

As explained in our article on the subject, an employee who is absent for less than 4 weeks for medical reasons during the reference period, or accrual period, will continue to accrue 30 working days of paid leave, i.e. 2.5 days per month. If the employee is absent for more than 4 weeks, they are entitled to a maximum of 2 working days of paid leave per month.

ℹ️ The default accounts in Timmi Absences for non-work related sick leave are:

• Illness with maintenance
• Illness without maintenance

We recommend that you check if you have created other absence accounts which are classed as non-work related absences.

This is how you do it:

1. As an administrator, go to the 'Settings' tab (1) > 'Regulations' (2) > 'Seniority & Adjustment' or 'Accrual' (3) > 'Create a rule' (4)

1. In the window that appears, select 'Adjustment'

1. A final window opens to set up your rule (the numbers in red correspond to the number in the screenshot below):

• (1) Give it a descriptive name, such as "Adjustment of sick leave - 80%"
• (2) Choose the paid leave account to apply the adjustment to
  • If your company manages both business and working day leave, you'll need to create two separate rules
• (3) Select the accrual profiles the adjustment rule will be applied to
  • ⚠️ If your accrual profiles do not require your employees to accrue the same amount of paid leave over the reference period, you will need to create a separate rule for each total amount. For example, it is possible to create a single rule for the leave entitlement profiles '25 paid leave', '25 paid leave + 10 RTT (comp days)' and '25 paid leave + RTT (comp days) Forfait (package days) 218 days', as they all provide 25 paid leave days, but you will need to create another rule for the '20 paid leave days (80%)' profile, which allows only 20 to be accrued over the year.
• (4) Choose 'Since the start of the accrual' as the basis for calculating the presence rate
• (5) Then select all your absence accounts that are classed as non-work related sick leave
• (6) Choose an adjustment mode per block
• (7) A block is 5 business days
• (8) The amount of debit per block will vary according to whether leave is managed in business or working days, and the total amount accrued over the reference period
  • For 25 paid leave business days: debit amount = 0.11
    (see "Detailed calculation logic for the accrual of 25 paid leave days" below)
  • For 30 paid leave working days: debit amount = 0.13
  • If you have a different accrual, the debit amount is the result of this calculation: total amount of theoretical paid leave accrued over the year/12 (number of months in the year) * 0.25 (1 week in a month) * 0.2 (portion of accrual to be deducted in the event of non-work related sick leave)
    • 0.2 = 24 paid leave working days (corresponds to the accrual of paid leave required by law for an employee absent for more than 4 weeks for a profile of 30 paid leave working days).
• (9) Finally, click on the threshold and upper limit advanced options
• (10) Enter a threshold of 20 business days, which will trigger this rule only after 4 weeks of absence, even if they are not continuous.

Detailed calculation logic for the accrual of 25 paid leave days, calculated in business days

- 1 month of actual work counts as 4 weeks
- 4 weeks gives an entitlement to 2.08 paid leave days for full attendance and 1.66 paid leave days if the employee is on sick leave for non-work related reasons (only for sick leave more than 4 weeks of absence over the accrual period)
- 1.66 paid leave days per 4 weeks, implying that a week is worth 0.41 paid leave days for absences of more than 4 weeks
- 2.08 paid leave days per 4 weeks, implying that a week is worth 0.52 paid leave days for full attendance

When an employee is absent for more than 4 weeks of non-work related sick leave during the accrual period, the 25 paid leave days rule credits them with 2.08 days, i.e. 0.52 days per week. However, they are only entitled to 0.41 days. The overpayment is 0.52 - 0.41 = 0.11 per week of absence. So we set an adjustment rule that deducts 0.11 from each week of absence. A week's absence is represented as a block of 5 business days.

Entitlement to carried over paid leave

The law states that:

The law stipulates an entitlement to carry over unused leave due to sickness or accident, for a period of 15 months from the date the employer notified the employee of their leave balance.

If an employee is absent due to a work-related or non-work related illness, they will be able to request any unused leave accrued during their absence within 15 months of their return to work.

Information on paid leave entitlement

Please note: this 15-month period only starts if the employer has informed the employee of their paid leave entitlement within one month of resuming work after a period of sick leave. Two pieces of information are required:

• the number of leave days available to the employee
• the deadline for taking them.

What about long-term sick leave?

If an employee does not return to work within 15 months from the end of the accrual period, all entitlements accrued during that period are lost.

⚠️ Note: certain contrary provisions may be included in a company or establishment agreement, a collective agreement or an industry-wide agreement.

How do I process the carried over paid leave entitlement in Timmi Absences?

There are two main dates to be aware of: when an employee returns to work, and the end of the leave consumption period for employees on sick leave.

1) When the employee returns

In the 'Action to be taken' tab, the 'Returning to work after a long absence' block lets you monitor employees who are on sick leave and soon returning.

• If you don't see this block, check that you have the 'See the resumption of work after a long absence' permission in roles and permissions.

There are 2 steps in Timmi Absences for each employee who has been notified about their leave entitlement: 

• Create an account with a personalized consumption period for this employee
• Transfer days from their paid leave account for the current consumption period to this new account

Step 1: Create a personalized account

In the Settings > Accounts tab, select 'Create a new account'.

Select the One-time account type.

Configure the account: 

• (1) Choose a descriptive name. For example: Paid leave carried over 15 months - [Consumption period] - [Employee].
  • Therefore, in our example the account is called 'Paid leave carried over 15 months - 2023/2024 - Florence Geste'
• (2) Don't forget to select the 'Account available to employees' box
• (3) Define the consumption period for this account. This period begins when you inform the employee of their paid leave entitlement and continues for 15 months.
  • In our example, Florence Geste will be notified of their paid leave entitlement as soon as they return from leave on 05/30. The consumption period of the account created is therefore 05/30/2024 - 08/29/2025
• Click on Create account.

Step 2: Transfer paid leave from the current consumption period to this new account

go to the Credit/Debit > Manual adjustment tab and select 'Individual adjustment'

• (1) Select the employee. Florence Geste in our example.
• (2) Select the employee's paid leave account currently being consumed
• (3) Transfer the full balance
• (4) To the account created in step 1, Paid leave carried over 15 months - 2023/2024 - Florence Geste
• (5) Choose a label
• Record

The new account will appear for your employee, who will be able to use it for a 15 month period. The days will be lost after this period.

2) At the end of the consumption period.

3 steps: 

• Identify the employees affected by a carryover
• Create a one-time leave account to transfer leave to be carried over
• Transfer the employee's leave balance to this one-off account.

Step 1: Identify the employees affected by a carryover

This is achieved by using the customized absence report in the Reports tab.

In the right side pane that opens, enter: 

• Period - Consumption period, normally from 06/01 to 05/31.
• Accounts - You must enter all your non-work related sick leave accounts
• Columns - For better readability, we recommend that you only keep the columns:
  • Last name
  • First name
  • Account
  • End date (absence)
  • Value
• Total - Lastly, group the results by user

 

The next step is to analyze the report. We want to know which employees have been absent for more than a year due to non-work related sick leave.

One way to define this is employees whose last day of absence is on the last day of the consumption period (here it's 05/31) and whose accumulated days of absence exceed 365 (366 for leap years) have been absent for the entire period. Note that this is the case since sick leave is counted on a calendar basis.

In the example below, Florence Geste is affected by the 15-month carryover. Other employees are not.

Step 2: Create a one-time account 

In the Settings > Accounts tab, select 'Create a new account'.

Select the One-time account type.

Configure the account: 

• (1) Choose a descriptive name. For example: Paid leave carried over 15 months - [Consumption period],
• (2) Don't forget to select the 'Account available to employees' box
• (3) Define the consumption period for this account, which is the 15-month period following the end of the consumption period which you are carrying over,
  • In our example, the consumption period is 06/01/2023 - 05/31/2024, so the consumption period of the account we are creating must be 06/01/2024 - 08/31/2025
• Click on Create account.

Step 3: Transfer paid leave to this new one-time account

Finally, go to the Credit/Debit tab > Manual adjustment and select 'Collective adjustment'

Select the employees identified in step 1. In our example, only Florence Geste was involved.

• (1) Select the account with a consumption period that has just ended
• (2) Transfer the entire balance
• (3) Select the target account created in step 2 (in our example, 'Paid leave carried over 15 months 2023/2024')
• (4) Finally, give this process a name, for example: Transfer of leave carried over due to sick leave