Sick Leave Entitlement Calculation

Industry-Specific Entitlements

The entitlement of sick leave for employees depends on the company's industry, if it is regulated by a Wage-Regulated Order.

Some employees have a maximum of 10 days (two weeks) of paid sick leave, whereas others may have 30 days of sick leave and 30 days of half-pay sick. A full break-down of the sick days per industry is shown at the bottom of this article.

For the rest of this article, we will stick to an example of two weeks of paid sick leave (80 hours).

Sick Entitlement Calculations

The entitlement for most full-time employees will be the full portion (80 hours) or as specified by the Wage Regulation Order. There are some other cases you may encounter:

Employees working Reduced Hours

Employees on reduced hours will have a pro-rata calculation of the following formula:

hours per week / 40 hours * full-time sick entitlement

For instance, an employee working 32 hours per week, will therefore have

30 hrs / 40 hrs * 80 sick hrs = 60 sick hrs

 

In this case, it makes sense, as 60 hours equals two weeks! It may not be as straightforward for employees in different Wage Regulation Orders, but the same formula applies.

Terminated Employees

Terminated employees do not get any reduction in their entitlement to sick leave. Therefore, if an employee has 80 hours entitled of paid sick and is terminated on the 31st of January, the employee is still entitled to all 80 hours.

Newly Engaged Employees

If an employee is newly engaged within the calendar year, then a pro-rata entitlement of sick leave is entitled based on the following formula:

worked days / working days in the year * full-time sick entitlement
 

For instance, someone employed to work only the last four weeks of December (i.e. 20 working days), then they would have:

20 days / 260 days * 80 hrs =  6.15 hours

 

Do note that in some Wage Regulation Orders, employees are not entitled to any paid sick leave in their first few months of employment

Part-Time Employees Working Variable Hours

The sick leave entitlement for part-timers who do not work fixed hours is a projection based on their average working week. Therefore, one should look at the last 13 weeks (e.g. last 3 payslips, if issuing monthly payslips):

average weekly hours = total basic hours in last 13 weeks / 13 weeks

 

Then, the sick leave calculation can be projected as follows:

average weekly hours / 40 hours * full-time sick entitlement

 

Therefore, an employee working average hours of 24 hours per week will have:

24 hrs / 40 hrs * 80 = 48 hours

Half-Pay Considerations

Whenever a Wage Regulation Order allows for half-pay entitlement, the same formulas as above will apply with no exception, but simply replacing the full pay entitlement with half-pay entitlement.

Industry-Specific Entitlements

For some of the industries, employees are only entitled to sick leave after 6 or 12 months of continuous service.

In some industries, the entitlements may differ slightly based on additional conditions such as role.

Related Articles

If you want to understand better how half-pay, unpaid sick or sickness benefits are calculated on Buddy, please check out the following pages.

• Sick Leave Automation for Half-Pay and Unpaid Sick
• What are the Sickness Benefit and the Injury Benefit?