This help sheet is for Lucca Absences administrators who want to understand and use the leave donation feature.
What is a leave donation?
Leave donation is a mechanism that lets employees give all or some of their unused rest days to another employee in the company.
Under French law no. 2014-459 of May 9, 2014 (the "loi Mathys"), and decree no. 2018-874 of October 9, 2018 (extending the measure to cover public sector workers), employees can donate their leave or rest days to someone working at the same company under a legal and regulated process.
Who can benefit?
The first condition for rest day donations is that they should take place between two people working at the same company.
The employee who receives the rest day can be:
- the parent of a child who is under 20 years of age and critically ill, living with a disability, or the victim of an accident, and who requires ongoing care and the continuous presence of their parent,
- the closely-related caregiver (spouse, child, brother or sister, etc.) of a person living with a disability (with a permanent disability classified at a minimum of 80% incapacity) or an elderly person who has lost their independence,
- a closely-related caregiver who hadpermanent and effective parental authority over a person under 25 years of age who has died. They can receive leave donations for one year following the date of death.
Who can donate their rest days?
All employees, regardless of their role, type of employment contract (permanent or fixed-term), or seniority, can donate a rest day to another employee at their company, in both the private and public sectors.
What types of leave can be donated?
Every employee in France has a minimum "reserve" of four weeks of annual leave; no rest days from this period can be donated.
This means they can donate one or several days of their:
- annual leave starting from the 5th week of paid leave
- comp days
- recovery and compensation days (in cases of overtime)
- leave days resulting from time savings accounts
Additionally, these donated days:
- should be actual leave days: they can't donate leave days yet to be obtained in advance
- can be split (taken as half-days, for example) as long as the employer agrees to this
A "donated" leave day is equivalent to a "normal" leave day. In other words, when an employee receives a day from a colleague at their company, they retain all of their benefits and:
- are paid their usual salary,
- continue to accumulate seniority,
- receive their pension entitlements.
How to donate rest days to a colleague
The employee who is donating their leave days initiates the process. This donation should be:
- voluntary (nobody is obliged to donate a rest day),
- without compensation (the leave day is neither taken at another time, nor paid for),
- subject to the approval of the employer, who has the right to refuse and is not obliged to provide a reason for this refusal.
How to do this in Lucca Absences
In our example, Valentin wants to donate one 2024 comp day to Chloé.
When logged in as an administrator, go to Credit/Debit > Manual adjustment > Individual adjustment and select:
1) the employee who will donate the day
2) the account to be debited
3) transfer to another employee
4) the employee who will receive the day
5) the amount to transfer and to which account
Watch this video for a how-to demonstration: