How do holidays impact an employee's leave balances under FMLA, state laws, and company policies?
Cocoon categorizes an employee’s time away by evaluating four scenarios, which consider both
The length of the company holiday closure
The employee’s leave duration
The scenarios below assume the employee is not expected to work on company-closed days.
Examples
Example 1:
An employee is taking 12 weeks of leave that intersects Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving is listed as a two-day Company Holiday in Cocoon. Those two days will count against the employee's leave balances.
Example 2:
An employee is taking less than a work week of leave, and the company closure is a week or more. Company Holiday days are not counted toward the employee’s leave time.
Pay clarity:
To understand how company holiday time impacts an employee’s leave, refer to the leave timeline.
When Holiday time is not counted as leave time - meaning your settings indicate employee pay comes from Holiday Pay, not paid leave, on a given date - those dates will appear on an employee’s timeline as a separate holiday box.
Additionally, Holiday pay will be included within the pay files provided during any applicable employee’s leave.
For more information on entering company holidays within Cocoon, see How to specify company holidays.
Example scenarios
Scenario A: Holidays are included in leave
If your company leave policy is inclusive of holidays, employees do not get additional leave days if their leave crosses a company-observed holiday.
While specifying your company holiday within Cocoon, select the Leave of Absence Policy option for the subset of employees you want reflected this way.
This means any employee taking leave over this holiday will be paid from their leave of absence policy rather than from Holiday Pay.
Their leave timeline will reflect the holiday as part of the leave of absence policy. As you can see below there is no holiday box.
Scenario B
If your company leave policy is to exclude holidays, employees should receive additional leave days if their leave crosses a company-observed holiday.
While specifying your company holiday within Cocoon, select the Paid Holiday option for the subset of employees you want reflected this way.
This means any employee taking leave over this holiday will be paid from Holiday Pay rather than from any leave of absence policy.
On the leave timeline, these dates will appear as Holiday Pay instead of paid leave.
Scenario C
If your company does not specify any holidays within Cocoon, employees will be paid according to your leave of absence policies within Cocoon, and no holidays will be accounted for throughout any leaves.
FAQs:
If I input a holiday and choose "Holiday Pay" for the pay setting, will that extend an employee's paid leave time if their leave intersects with that holiday?
Yes. Here’s how to think about it: setting pay to come from Holiday Pay indicates that, on that day, the employee will be paid separately from their paid leave time.
This means their paid leave can include an additional day or days.
What happens if my company has back-to-back holidays or shutdowns that overlap with a weekend?
If your company is closed continuously, even if it is closed for multiple reasons, enter it as one single holiday/shutdown period. This will ensure accurate balance calculation.
Example:
If your company is closed on 12/25 for Christmas, 1/1 for New Year's, and all the days between — 12/26 through 12/31 — enter this in Cocoon as one shutdown from 12/25–1/1.
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