Leave & attendance

Hours, holidays and leave are where Sri Lankan employment law is most specific — and where the rules genuinely differ between a shop and office role, a wages board trade and a trainee. The entitlements below are the common Shop and Office position; check the gazette for your wages board before applying them to a covered trade.

Normal working hours#

For shop and office employees the normal working day is eight hours and the normal week is forty-five hours, excluding intervals for meals and rest. Hours beyond that are overtime, and there are limits on how much overtime an employee may work in a week.

Shift and roster patterns are allowed within those limits, but the pattern should be published in advance so employees know their days, hours and rest day.

Overtime#

Overtime is paid at a premium on the employee's hourly rate — commonly one and a half times normal pay. The hourly rate itself comes from a divisor applied to monthly pay, and the divisor depends on the act or wages board covering the role.

For example, with a monthly divisor of 240 and a 1.5 multiplier, an employee on 120,000 LKR earns 500 LKR an hour normally and 750 LKR for each overtime hour. Any hours above the standard daily hours count as overtime.

Some roles are not eligible for overtime at all — typically managerial and executive positions. Decide eligibility per role and record it, rather than handling it case by case at the end of the month.

Rest days, poya and public holidays#

Three kinds of non-working day carry their own pay rules.

These are statutory minimums. Your contracts, or a wages board decision, can be more generous — and the annual holiday calendar is gazetted each year, so the dates should be loaded before the year starts.

Annual and casual leave#

For shop and office employees, in a full year of service:

• Annual leave — 14 days, granted on completing a year of service and taken in the following year
• Casual leave — 7 days a year, for illness or private matters, usually able to be taken as half days

The first year is the part people get wrong. Annual leave in the year of joining is normally pro-rated by the quarter in which the employee joined, and casual leave typically accrues part of a day per completed month. Both should be calculated from the joining date, not granted in full.

Unused annual leave is generally carried or paid out according to the rules that apply to the role; unused casual leave usually lapses at year end.

Other leave#

• Maternity leave — paid leave around childbirth, with the entitlement and the nursing intervals afterwards set by the ordinance and act covering the employee.
• Medical leave for trainees — trainees under a training agreement have their own entitlement, separate from casual leave.
• Leave your company grants — bereavement, study, marriage or short leave. These are contractual, so define who approves them and whether they are paid.

No-pay#

When an absence is not covered by an entitlement, the day is deducted. Two things decide how much:

• The divisor — commonly the days in the month, or a fixed 30
• The sandwich rule — where it applies, non-working days falling between two no-pay days are also deducted

Because no-pay reduces gross pay, it also reduces the EPF and ETF base for that month. It should be settled before payroll runs, not corrected afterwards.

Recording attendance#

Whatever the entitlements, they are only as good as the attendance record behind them. In practice that means:

• A daily record of hours worked, including overtime
• Leave applications and approvals kept with the leave balance they draw from
• Records available for inspection, covering past periods as well as the current one

Fingerprint terminals, mobile check-in with location verification, or a supervisor-marked roster all work — as long as everything lands in one timesheet that payroll can read.

Weave keeps the act or wages board on each employee, so entitlements, accruals, holiday pay and overtime follow that role's rules. Attendance from fingerprint terminals and the mobile app lands in the same timesheet, and approved leave and no-pay flow straight into the payroll run.