Status: LIVE

Special Leave

Sometimes things happen in life that we have to deal with. And these take priority over work. As a company, we want to look after everyone and be supportive. We believe that you shouldn’t have to give up your well-earned vacation days just so that you can take care of “life things”. Those life things require energy from you just as much as work, and we want to save you vacations days so you can use them to truly rest.

Labour laws partly recognise these needs, and for some cases there are laws that give you these rights. E.g. in Austria when a direct relative passes away or when you move. But these laws are incomplete at best. For example if your grandparent passes away, you are not entitled to anything, even though you may be just as close to them as a direct family member. But these laws are not enough. But we don’t need a law to tell us to do the right thing, we can just do the right thing.

The intention is rather simple. But the implementation is tricky. The list defining what would count and what wouldn’t, would be endless. So to provide clarity and a standard, we are following a “case law” approach. Basically, we evaluate each request (and sometimes offer them proactively) on an individual basis. And every time, such a request is granted, we add an anonymised entry to the list below. Our goal is to build a body of examples that should give a good understanding of what we consider to be “Special Leave”. See the list below (some cases are already covered by laws in some countries, we are listing those as well). If there is a conflict between our list and labour law, we take the more generous of the two. This list is incomplete, so don’t hesitate to ask your Team Lead.

When you get special leave, it is basically paid time off. You get paid, but you don’t use up your vacation allowance. Another way to think of it is: “paid days off, on top of your vacation”.

Process

• The same process as for Holiday Requests.

• With one caveat: special leave might be more personal/private, so you only have to provide the reason to your Team Lead and to the HoF. You can do so over Slack, or whichever way you prefer. Reason aside, please do file a formal request via email as described in Holiday Requests (except leaving the reason out).

• Your Team Lead will let you and HoF know how many days of special leave you are granted.

• Let people know (you can skip the reason in the public channels)! See Out of Office

Special Leave Cases (work in progress)