University of California, Berkeley

HCM: Leaves of Absence

Person Level Leave and Job Level Leave

Person level leave actions place the person on leave from all jobs in the Payroll system. Person level leave must be used when the employee only has one active job. This is the most common type of leave action.

Job level leave is only used when the employee has more than one active appointment but is going on leave from only one of the appointments and continuing to work and be paid on the other appointment(s).

NOTE: If the employee does not have an end date (an Indefinite or Tenured appointment) - do NOT add an end date for this person on Job Information and Earnings Distribution pages. The Expected Return date field and the "Return from Leave" row that will be added are all that is required to signal when the leave will end.

Expected Return Date

For all leave actions, you must enter Expected Return Date (it will pop up on the Work Location page once you choose a Leave Action code). This is the date the employee returns to work (NOT the last day of the leave). If the employee does not return on that date, you must extend the leave by updating the Expected Return Date. You must add a new row called Data Change-Expected Return Date change and update the date. It is important to keep track of leaves and update the Expected Return Date (before the date occurs), because the Payroll System will return the employee on the Expected Return Date, even if the HCM record still thinks the person is on leave.

Returning From Leave

To return an employee from leave, enter a Return from Leave row effective the date the employee returns.

If the employee is taking different types of leaves in succession (e.g., paid leave followed by unpaid leave), you must return the employee from the first leave and place the employee on the next leave using the same effective date. This will prevent the employee from being paid for one day.

If the employee is not returning from leave, but is instead being Terminated (while on leave) - you do NOT need to enter a Return from Leave row. Simply enter the Termination row. The system may prompt you to enter a "last day on pay status" (the day before an unpaid leave starts) on the Employment Data page.

Restrictions on Entering Multiple Leave Actions

Because of the way leaves are understood by the Payroll System, there are certain restrictions on entering multiple leave actions in HCM:

  • HCM will allow you to enter multiple Leave, Data Change-Expected Return Date and/or Return from Leave rows for the same employee on the same day. However, the interface between HCM & PPS will hold any LEAVE rows and only pass ONE row each night to PPS until all the rows have passed. (So if you add 3 rows n Monday, on Monday night the first will pass, on Tuesday night, the 2nd will pass, etc.)
  • PPS often has trouble understanding that two kinds of leave occured in the same pay period and remembers only the last one. (For example, if someone goes on Unpaid leave early in the month and then is on a Paid leave in the 2nd part of the month the Payroll system sometimes just remembers the last leave.) So if leaves are changing mid-month, have your payroll person monitor the Payroll system to ensure pay is handled correctly.
  • The interface between HCM & PPS will hold FUTURE dated rows and send them over when they take effect. This can cause issues if there is a leave action that is occuring after the payroll deadline for the month. (Example: if the MO deadline is on the 23rd and you have a new leave action that occurs on the 26th of the month -- PPS will not act upon the future action, even though it falls within the current month for which it is calculating pay).

Job Level Leaves

When adding a job level leave you may need to make adjustments to the earnings codes.

If you put someone on a job level unpaid leave you may need to change the Earnings code to PRT (if budgeted) or NPY (no pay for non-budgeted people).

If the person is on a Sabbatical leave you will use either SLN (not in residence) or SLR (in Residence) as appropriate.

If the leave is an approved Workers Comp leave, the Workers Compensation office may instruct you to use ESL. ESL leaves are entered differently from other leaves. You are often instructed to change the FTE/% (which is NOT changed for other leaves) to 80% on the Earnings Distribution page and .01 on the Job Information page.