APL: An emerging leave policy

Today the idea of leisure assumes immense importance in an era of high incomes and nuclear families. Leave from work is a necessity for every employee at some point either out of choice or compulsion due to an illness or to attend a wedding, go to a PTA meeting or take a dear one to the hospital. The concept of menstrual leave for women employees is also gradually gaining ground. Leave in the organised sector of an economy is categorised into casual, medical, maternity, earned or special leave which creates a complex leave management system. To overcome the complexities of the existing leave system, an emerging concept of All Purpose Leave (APL) has been introduced in a few startups in Bengaluru and other parts of the country.

However, almost all companies in the country have an archaic leave policy which includes a specific number of sick leave, casual leave, earned leave, privilege leave etc. which limits an employee to avail a specific kind of leave. APL entitles employees two days of leave per month, accounting to 24 days in a year. This leave could be compounded every month for each employee. But APL is sanctioned proportionate to the period of employment in a present financial year. Leave due to sickness, accident, declared holidays and sanctioned leave will be treated as continuous employment.

All the different types of leaves can be carried forward to the next year’s leave balance dependent on the employee’s length of service. At the end of the service, each employee is entitled to encash the remaining leaves. India is a ‘Country of Holidays’ with multitude of national and religious festivals and leaves declared over the death of political and religious leaders. This provides scope for employees to club public holidays with personal leave which becomes ‘sandwich’ leave. In the existing leave management system, the ‘sandwich’ leave also gets counted as casual leave which will not be the case with the concept of APL.During an employee’s probationary period, they can avail only one day of leave per month.

After confirmation with the organisation, they are entitled to avail all the APLs. All employees, consultants, apprentices should inform their managers regarding the utilisation of their APL at least six days in advance if they plan to avail over three days of leave, to enable the management re-assign workload systematically. In case of sickness, employees should inform their immediate managers about the duration of their absence and should regularly update them about any prolongation of sickness. Implementing the concept of APL would help maintain employees’ work-life balance which would encourage a healthy work culture. The flexibility of employers to provide for the employees’ basic needs, would make the organisation an attractive workplace. Sometimes people apply for Sick Leave and subsequently produce fake medical prescriptions. However, APL policy does away the need to resort to such trickery. This would reduce absenteeism and attrition rates, as employees will not give any vague or false reason to avail the balance leaves before the calendar year ends, in order to prevent its lapse.

Today, employee retention is important for companies which operate in a competitive business environment. Cerebral capital of employees is what makes the difference between a profitable and not so profitable company. APL only promotes the growing emphasis on the work-life balance of employees who all look for an employee-friendly organisation.

(Lijeesh is an Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru and Scaria works as a Process leader HR, Broadridge, Bengaluru)