Over the last decade, the federal and Saskatchewan governments have introduced many new employee leaves, which are continually changing. The pandemic has resulted in further additions and changes to leave legislation.
Keeping abreast of changes to legislated and recommended leaves takes time and research. Established policies and procedures can help you manage the changing landscape of leaves from employment.
Recently, several leaves of absence policies were updated and three new leave policies were added to the Saskatchewan Human Resources database in PolicyPro. They include:
- D4.04 — Personal Leave of Absence was completely revised to deal only with non-statutory leaves of absence and remove references to voting leave, organ donor and political office leave. These leaves are statutory leaves that are covered in new model policies. The personal leave of absence policy can include any additional employer-provided leaves for sabbaticals, education leave, personal matters needing more than three days of time off, secondment assignment, among others.
- D4.12 — Family Leave was updated to better reflect the requirements under Saskatchewan’s employment standards legislation and to reference the need for accommodation if required.
- D4.13 — Sick Leave/Short-Term Disability was refocused to reflect the requirements under Saskatchewan’s employment standards legislation and how the statutory requirement can be combined with a short-term disability benefit. Also, if you want to provide paid sick leave in addition to or as a greater benefit to the long-term leave for serious injury or illness, this would be the model policy to use.
- D4.27 — Long-Term Leave for Serious Injury or Illness was updated to reflect the requirements under Saskatchewan’s employment standards legislation to provide unpaid time off to employees who are ill or injured. In addition, the overview discusses how the various other leaves (i.e., emergency leave, organ donor leave and family leave) and the long-term leave for serious injury or illness work together and what needs to be considered during an emergency.
- D4.29 — Organ Donor Leave is a new policy added to help employers comply with the requirement under Saskatchewan’s employment standards legislation to provide unpaid time off to employees who donate certain organs to other individuals.
- D4.30 — Voting Leave (political office leave) is a new policy that covers the requirement to provide paid time off to employees to vote in a federal or provincial election. In addition, it covers the requirement in Saskatchewan to provide political office leave.
- G7.04 — Emergency Leave is a new policy that deals with the type of leave that can be enacted to deal with a public health emergency such as COVID-19, time off to get a vaccine to stop the spread of a communicable disease like COVID-19 and the type of program for paid sick leave that governments can put in place to support employers and employees during a health crisis.
Reviewed by the employment law professionals at MLT Aikins and part of the over 100 policies in the Saskatchewan HR database in PolicyPro, these policies are key to managing leaves of absence in your workplace. In addition, the PolicyPro platform lets you manage your policies from creation to sign-off, providing in-depth commentary on the related legislation, best practices, policy statements and procedures that you can modify and distribute to your employees in an easy-to-use online environment.
If you don’t currently subscribe to PolicyPro, take a trial. The expert-prepared policies and the PolicyPro platform will help you meet the challenge of managing the wide variety of leaves with confidence.
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