Hi

I have an employee who would like to take some parental leave but she only wants 3 days and not a full week. (Her child is not disabled).

We are happy to allow this, there’s no point forcing her to take unpaid leave when she’d rather be at work.

My question is, how do I deal with this in relation to her overall entitlement? She works a 5 day Mon-Fri week. Would I knock a week off her entitlement or do I only knock 3 days off and adjust our policy to say that we allow blocks of less than a week to be taken?

I’ve had a look on the DTI website and this is what that says:

“In cases where the leave taken is in blocks of less than one week, a week is only deducted from an employee’s overall entitlement to 13 weeks, (18 weeks for parents of disabled children) when the short periods of leave add up to what would be a normal or average working week.”

Any thoughts?

Thanks
Helen Moretti