Sick during vacation: what do you do as an employer with those vacation days?
One of your employees returns from vacation and tells you they were sick in bed for a few days. Good to hear they're feeling better, of course. But then comes the question: "Do I get those vacation days back?"
The answer is yes. Article 7:638 paragraph 8 of the Dutch Civil Code is clear about this: sick days during vacation do not count as vacation days. You give them back, but how does that work exactly?
The rules in practice
Only the working days on which someone was sick count. A sick week during summer vacation results in five vacation days, not seven. Weekends and public holidays already didn't count as vacation.
Sounds simple. But in practice, things are a bit more complicated, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly: people rarely report sick while they are still away. They come home, recover, and then report it. Sometimes a week later. As an employer, you then have to recalculate which vacation days overlapped with the sickness, and whether they had already been deducted or not.
Secondly: what do you do if someone returns only partially recovered? Suppose someone was 50% better halfway through the vacation. Then you're dealing with partial absence overlapping with an already-approved vacation. Half a day per vacation day back? Most employers figure this out on their own, because most systems don't track this properly.
How Heartsome keeps track of this
As soon as you report an employee sick in Heartsome, the tool automatically calculates how many vacation days are returned based on the overlapping working days. This works in both directions: if the vacation was already approved and the days were deducted, they are corrected. If someone was already sick when the vacation started, those days are not deducted at all.
Partial recovery is processed pro rata. With 50% recovery, half a vacation day is returned per day.
We could have made this configurable, but we decided not to. A small employer simply shouldn't have to think about this.
Managers and HR can always backdate a sick report, so it's accurate even when someone only reports it after getting back.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does an employee have to report sick immediately, even during vacation? In principle within 24 hours, even from abroad. But in practice, people only report it when they return. In Heartsome, you can always backdate a sick report, so the vacation day correction is accurate in that case too.
Do these rules also apply to extra vacation days? For statutory vacation days, yes. For additional contractual vacation days, different arrangements may have been made in the employment contract or collective labor agreement. Check this if you're unsure.
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