Leave Policies in IT sector during Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a pretty huge impact on the working in corporate world, especially on the way the businesses in IT sector have helped the employees in these unforeseen circumstances. During this pandemic, the most important aspect was getting across the right information the employees regarding their compensation amount, regarding their leaves and what would happen to their working days and the leaves if at all they fall sick during the work from home process. These circumstances have of course, posed challenges to all the sectors and not just IT sector seeing as how the majority of people are currently working from home and it is a huge transition for them, which is why it was extremely important for the employees at every company to feel that they are being supported and are being taken care of by their employers. This includes the employers and leaders to provide guidance as well provide better leave policies which would be inclusive of the employee’s needs. 

One of the companies which has really eased this transition and helped the employees is TCS, they have brought out a series of policies and guidelines, essentially designed to make the working conditions of the employees better, these policies are designed in such a way to ensure that the employees would understand the work from home conditions and what is required of them in these along with providing them with practical tips and suggestions on how to make it work.

It has been repeatedly noticed that during this duration of the pandemic, more than the other companies, the Technology companies have been known to show more sympathy as what emphasized in the interview we had taken of Ms. Praghti Malhotra an ex- employee of opera browser, she informed us that the companies have brought out really helpful policies and even in Accenture Pt. Ltd. , it was noticed that the sick leave during the pandemic was still going on and the employees were even given a chance to take parental leave during the pandemic. Further, these technological companies are also expanding their paid parental or family leave benefits, through which the parents would get paid leaves for taking care of their family, this was also specifically emphasized on during the covid-19 pandemic, in order to provide greater support to the employees, who would be finding it difficult to juggle both the family as well as office work during the work from home.

Another technology company which proved to be really helpful was Microsoft, which offered an additional paid leave of more than 12 weeks while Google Inc. is offering an additional 14 weeks paid leave, these policies brought out to support the employees during these unprecedented times show the ethics and the values of the organization and how they help and provide support to the employees during such times.

It has been further noticed that Google has been one of the most helpful employer, in the sense that according to their new policies Google employees can now also go on leave without having any deductions from their standard paid leave allowance. Those on a half-day work schedule, meanwhile, can make use of their leave credits for up to 28 weeks, but the benefit is open only to Google’s full-time staff. Contractors – who constitute about 50% of the workforce – will need to coordinate their leave with their respective employers.

Not only this, Google has also set up a fund that will enable all contract and temporary workers globally to take paid sick leave should they need to due to potential coronavirus symptoms or quarantines, this one of the most important aspects for work from home during covid because many of the employees might just be tested positive due to covid itself. However, even after bringing these policies there are some issues, Google relies on approximately 120,000 temps and contractors on top of its 100,000 full-time employees, and not all of them have paid sick leave currently. Google's post seemed to indicate that the fund would cover expenses for those not already able to take sick leave under current employment arrangements.

Tech companies have also used their considerable financial and manufacturing power to help people in creating apps to help them identify if they have symptoms of the coronavirus. Tech companies have also manufactured and donated protective equipment for doctors, front liners. Apple and Google in particular are working together on contract tracing technologies to help people and health officials identify when the coronavirus might spread and to whom. Another policy by Google was to give one day off as a “Collective Wellbeing” day, on a Friday they decided to give leave to all the employees. This was done to ensure that employees don’t get burnout and in order to take care of the mental health.

Some others tech companies are further adding post hospitalisation counselling in their leave policies owing to the pandemic. Cognizant, has designed an employee Covid plan whereby the employee can avail of involuntary absence for the entire 14-day quarantine period beyond which sick leave can be used.

PAID SICK LEAVES

Paid sick leave is an important policy for protecting workers and their communities during a pandemic, serving not only to preserve jobs and incomes but also to contain the spread of the virus. Such policies are put in place to facilitate an orderly end to lockdowns – and sustain workers during subsequent waves of infection – but only if temporary extensions are kept in place and broadened to include those workers currently denied coverage.

Paid sick leave can only be effective as a broader policy instrument if it is widely available to large parts of the labour force. Although countries have expanded access to paid sick leave in case of COVID-19 or quarantine, important coverage gaps remain:

·        Workers in non-standard dependent employment, such as casual and zero hour contract workers, remain mostly excluded from sick pay. For instance, casual workers in Australia are not entitled to paid leave while workers on zero-hour contracts in the Netherlands only receive sick pay for those hours called upon. 

·        Self-employed workers now can access sickness benefits in most OECD countries, whereas they often had no or limited access going into the pandemic. Nevertheless, self-employed workers still tend to be de facto excluded in countries where sickness benefit enrolment for this group is voluntary and insurance coverage empirically very low, such as in the Czech Republic, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, and in the first six weeks of a sickness spell, Austria as well. Self-employed workers also generally cannot access sickness benefits in Italy. 

·        Gig workers, freelancers, and workers in dependent self-employment are in most cases not entitled to paid sick leave. They can now temporarily access sickness benefits in a few countries. Some platforms voluntarily provide sick pay to their gig workers, although compensation levels tend to be very low.

Employers are financially responsible for sick pay during an initial period of one to two weeks in most countries, or several weeks or months in some. This system encourages employers to prevent sick leave and help sick workers return to work, but it is counterproductive in a pandemic, when prevention requires sick workers to stay at home. Moreover, the system adds to the major financial stress that many employers are experiencing during this period. 

Capgemini brought some changes in their leave policies in India as well, they had reset the earned employees’ leaved to 15 from the previous. which proved to be detrimental to the employees. However, this change was brought only as a temporary change and applicable only till the 2nd Quarter ends. While the company did not specify the reason behind such steps, the Forum for IT Employees (FITE), a self-proclaimed union for IT employees, has alleged that the company has taken such steps in order to “compensate for business loss owing to the nationwide lockdown”.

Companies belonging to particularly tech sector have also employed to take their leaves during the pandemic in order to avoid a flooding of leave encashment at the end of the year which would lead to cash outflow. Even as per Deloitte, most of the actions taken by companies have been done in order to reduce the liabilities arising out of the leaves. Due to the reduction in leave utilization, the leave liability is increasing for most companies. Companies where leave encashment was on an annual basis are moving towards encashment on retrenchment/resignation. Although moving leave encashment to retrenchment or resignation may not provide immediate cash flows to the companies, it helps in deferring liabilities.

However, during the pandemic and keeping in mind the work from home, it has been noticed that the number of leaves taken by the employees have gone down by a huge number, this was also recorded by People String’s Leave transaction data, it was noticed that employees have applied for nearly 40% fewer leaves during the April-June period.

Moreover, the leave policies in India is such that all organizations have to provide a certain minimum number of leaves to their employees under the Shops and Establishment Act 1961 and the rules differ from state to state. However, it’s not mandatory for all organizations to offer leave encashment. So during the pandemic period, organisations were either “reducing current leave balance, not allowing for leave encashment, or putting a cap on it" in 2020. The tech sector on the other hand is encouraging employees to take leaves and not pile them up till the year end.

When it comes to big tech houses like Apple, they have begun providing unlimited paid leave to hourly employees, including those at its retail stores, who become sick with cold or flu symptoms similar to covid-19. The company is also urging corporate employees to work from home, and said it has “increased cleaning protocols” at its stores.

So, companies have devised creative ways to get staff to stay off work. Some have limited the number of leaves carried forward to the next year to 10.This acts as another step to ensure that employees utilise their leaves in the current financial year.

Reduction of permissible accumulation of leaves is also done to bring down the overall leave-encashment-liability on the books of the company, as also noticed in KPMG. 

Tech Mahindra is another one of such tech companies, which is Committed towards the fight against COVID-19, Tech Mahindra, has also created a special leave policy which is over and above the existing leave entitlement for employees who may test positive. As part of TechMHRNxt charter, focuses on reimagining people function for creating ‘human-centred workplace’ and enhance employee experience by leveraging next-generation technologies along with human interactions.

CONCLUSION

While legal experts have argued that, according to the law, employees are entitled to leave (sick leave, privileged or earned leave, etc.), in situations where they are not ill-suited but self-sufficient or have been asked to quarantine, a number of companies in India are taking the leap forward to allow fully paid special leave in a bid to encourage social distance so that any potentially infected worker does not attend. Employers find this case to be entirely distinct from the other and treat this absence from work as paid leave while the other routine annual leave is unchanged. Legal specialists and businesses are now looking at ways to avoid discrimination on medical grounds such that the contractor cannot rely on a contract of employment to fire an employee on medical grounds for being absent from work for more than a month.

As far as IT companies are concerned, it has been noticed that most of these companies have brought in some really positive changes for the employees with regard to their leave policies, especially the big tech firms like Google, Microsoft and Apple. However still in regard to parental leaves and sick paid leaves during work from home, these policies still need to be changes and something greater needs to be implemented. Seeing as how things became extremely difficult for employees to balance the family as well as office work during the work from home caused by pandemic.

REFERENCES

1. https://justcapital.com/reports/how-the-100-largest-employers-are-performing-regarding-covid-19-paid-sick-leave-and-best-practices/

2. https://www.expresscomputer.in/news/tech-mahindra-launches-mhealthy-solution-for-workforce-and-community-safety-against-covid-19/61984/

3. https://paycheck.in/labour-law-india/leave-and-holidays/sick-leave

4. https://justcapital.com/reports/how-the-100-largest-employers-are-performing-regarding-covid-19-paid-sick-leave-and-best-practices/

5. https://www.expresscomputer.in/news/tech-mahindra-launches-mhealthy-solution-for-workforce-and-community-safety-against-covid-19/61984/