Overview
Maternity Leave: A pregnant employee can resort to maternity leave for an uninterrupted period of eighteen (18) weeks. The first fourteen (14) weeks are paid by the employer but the weeks beyond the first fourteen (14) weeks are not paid by the employer. Click here to view the official source.
Paternity Leave: Paternity leave from work is allowed to all employees who are equivalent second parents, on the occasion of the birth or the adoption of a child for the purposes of providing care. The paternity leave is of ten (10) working days, to be taken immediately after the birth or the adoption of the child, without loss of wages. Click here to view the official source.
Permissions
To request leave, employees must have the "Request Leave" permission. By default, employees can only request vacation leave, whereas admins can book a variety of leave types, including sick leave, maternity leave, paternity leave, injury leave, and others. These leave types can be added to your company's account. To modify the leave types available to your employees, instructions here.
Admins or users with both "Request Leave" and "Approve Leave" permissions, as well as the ability to book Maternity and Paternity leave, can still request these leave types, even if the "Allow user to request" toggle is turned off.
Maternity/Paternity/Parental Leave - Adding Entitlement
The global leave entitlements for Vacation Leave and Sick Leave can be found under the Entitlements tab in the Leave section. However, for leave types like Maternity, Paternity, and Parental leave, entitlements must be assigned to each employee, rather than globally. In cases where an employee's maternity leave spans two calendar years, the entitlement will need to be split between the two years.
To assign leave entitlements to an individual employee, you may follow this article.
The leave entitlements for Maternity and Paternity leave for full-time employees are as follows:
- Maternity leave: 560 hours
- Paternity leave: 80 hours
For Parental leave entitlements, check the official source here.
Booking Maternity/Paternity/Parental Leave
Maternity leave - How it works
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During the first 14 weeks of maternity leave, you will receive your full salary, including any adjustments, fringe benefits, government bonuses, and social security contributions.
During the final 4 weeks of maternity leave, you will not receive salary, adjustments, or fringe benefits. However, you will continue to accumulate government bonuses and be responsible for social security contributions.
When booking maternity leave, the system will automatically calculate the 14 weeks based on the leave start date. This can be adjusted if necessary.
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If a public or national holiday falls on a working day or a weekly day of rest (other than Saturday or Sunday, unless your company’s schedule includes weekends as workdays) during an employee's maternity leave, the employee is entitled to an additional day's worth of vacation leave.
This means the employee will receive the equivalent of one full day of vacation leave for the holiday, which will be added to their annual vacation leave balance. Read more about how to set up Public Holidays here.
Should there be any public holidays that fall in the periods of maternity leave booked:
1. You will be notified about this upon booking the maternity leave;
2. Maternity leave will not be deducted on such days (if the employee does not normally work public holidays);
3. Pro-rata leave entitlement is automatically added as an accumulated leave to the employee's vacation leave entitlement.
Click here to view the official source of Vacation Leave in Malta.
Paternity Leave - How it works
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Paternity leave will apply to fathers as well as second parents who are in employment. Fathers or equivalent second parents shall have the right to paternity leave of ten (10) working days that is to be taken on the occasion of the birth or the adoption of the worker’s child. Such paternity leave will have to be paid in full by the employer to the employee.
Casual Workers
Employees who do not have a fixed schedule will need to manually enter the number of hours they take off each day when booking Maternity, Paternity, or Parental leave. An alternative is to add Leave Time Slots. Doing so will allow a quick way of input the daily hours for casual workers. For example: