How to award custom leave types to employees

Modern organizations need the ability to add custom leave policies (i.e. additional time off) and award the time to employees to book and use.

Suppose you want to give employees a quarterly self-care day, a day off for their birthday every year, or extra time off based on tenure. Now you can do this quickly and easily within the Remote platform.

In this article, we will cover: 

• Add custom leave type
• Creating leave policies within the same category
• Archiving leave categories and policies

Add custom leave type

Note: In order to add a custom leave policy for your company, you must have been assigned the right permissions in Remote (e.g. Company Owner, HR Manager)

1. Access Custom Leave Policies

   1. Log in to your account
   2. Navigate to Company Settings
   3. Select Custom Leave Policies

   Note: If this is your first custom policy, you'll see a "Create a Custom Policy" button. Otherwise, existing custom policies will appear at the top of the page.

2. Click Create a Custom Policy
3. Enter a Policy Name (e.g., "Volunteer Day 2025")Select an existing category or create a new one:
   • To create a new category, select "Something else" and enter your category name (e.g., "Volunteering Day")
     
     Now that you’ve named your new category, proceed to set up your first policy.
4. Fill in a policy name, a description employees will be able to see when booking this type of leave, and lastly, a longer description (optional) then click Continue.
   
   
   
   
5. Next, specify entitlement details for the leave policy.

   • Time Off Amount

     • Choose between Limited/Fixed Amount or other options
     • Specify the number of days (e.g., 3 days)

     First Year Proration

     • Decide if time off should be prorated for new employees based on their start date
     • Select Yes or No for proration

     Accrual Method

     Choose how employees receive their time off:

     • Lump Sum: Full amount available upfront
     • Monthly Accrual: Time off earned monthly

     Policy Rules

     The system will display reminders about standard settings:

     • Paid leave status
     • Not paid out upon termination
     • Does not carry over to the next year
     
     
     
     

6. Years of Service Adjustments (Optional)

   1. Choose whether the policy is based on years of service
   2. If Yes, configure additional rules:
      • Add extra days for each year of service (e.g., 1 additional day per year)
      • Add multiple rules as needed
   3. Select when balances increase:
      • Work Anniversary: On each employee's hire date anniversary
      • Annually: On January 1st each year
        

7. You can now assign your newly created leave days to:

   • All of your current active employees
   • A select sub-group of employees.
     

   If you select All current employees, remember that you’ll still need to manually add any new hires to your time off policies.

8. Should you click Select employees, you will be prompted to choose policy beneficiaries from a list of all of your current employees.
9. Finally, review your policy before applying it.
   
10. By clicking Publish policy, all the beneficiaries you have assigned to it will immediately be able to request their new days off according to the parameters you’ve set while creating the policy.

Creating leave policies within the same category

Within a leave category, you may choose to have different policies in place, based on certain criteria. For example, you might want to grant extra days to employees in countries where statutory time off is not as generous. You may want to grant more extra days for C-level employees.

You can do this by creating multiple policies within the same custom leave category.

Archiving leave categories and policies

When you archive/delete a category or policy, employees will lose the ability to book any remaining days entitled. However, the time off they booked using the entitlement prior to the policy being archived will still be in the system and valid.

To archive a custom leave policy:

1. From the custom leave policies page, you can always archive or delete policies.
   • Archiving or deleting a category will archive all associated policies. This will remove it as an option for currently entitled employees. All approved and pending requests will remain.
     
     
     
     
   • Archiving or deleting a policy within a category will only impact that policy’s entitlement and assignees.