Leave of absence policy template (employee attendance policy)

We’ve partnered with the Farillio team to provide a customisable leave of absence policy template that you can use for your own business, free of charge.

Why use a Farillio template?

Every business has its own legal requirements, but most small businesses don’t have the army of in-house lawyers that their big competitors rely on. That’s where Farillio comes in. They offer customisable legal templates to help make sure that you have the legal assistance you need.

What is a leave of absence policy?

A leave of absence policy, sometimes referred to as an employee attendance policy, governs employees’ rights to time off in addition to their statutory or contractual holiday entitlements. It includes things like time off for medical appointments, compassionate leave, and religious holidays.

It’s important that you have a written absence policy in place in order to set out employees’ entitlements, and to explain how time off can be taken. Our customisable leave of absence policy template means that you can set out those entitlements, as well as the procedures that employees need to follow in order to use them.

What does the leave of absence policy template cover?

Our leave of absence policy sets out the rules for when such leave might be granted. These include:

• Religious holidays
• Jury service and witness attendance
• Other public duties, for example if an employee is a justice of the peace, a member of a local authority, a health body, or an education body
• Cases in which an employee is a member of the armed forces reserves
• Medical appointments
• Compassionate leave
• Elective surgery
• Fertility treatment

In most cases, the time off granted under the leave of absence policy sample will be unpaid – for example, employees are generally not contractually entitled to pay if they take time off for medical appointments. However, you may choose to compensate them anyway as part of their contract.

Some of the cases listed above may require the employee to take further time off, for example to pursue fertility treatment beyond initial medical appointments. In the template, employees are encouraged to do so from their annual leave entitlement. However, again, you may choose to offer further time off in special circumstances. This is at your discretion.

What about statutory leave?

It’s crucial that you remember your legal obligations when it comes to statutory leave. You may also wish to use our separate employee annual leave policy template to set out how annual leave is granted.

Keep in mind that you may choose to offer employees further annual leave over and above their statutory entitlement. This can be an effective way of attracting and retaining talent.

Leave of absence policy template - free Word document for download

If you would like to make changes and don’t have Adobe Acrobat, you can also download our leave of absence policy template in Word format.

This document has been produced by Farillio so we can’t take responsibility for its contents. We'd recommend you take professional advice before making any important decisions based on its contents.