Paid annual leave is one of the clearest rights in the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), section 20. Every employee who works more than 24 hours a month earns it, and you cannot contract out of it.
How much annual leave
The minimum is 21 consecutive days of paid annual leave for every 12 months of employment (a "leave cycle"). Because that count includes weekends, it works out in working days as:
- 15 working days a year for a five-day-week worker.
- 18 working days a year for a six-day-week worker.
That is the legal minimum. You are free to offer more, and many employers do.
How it accrues
You can calculate leave one of two agreed ways:
- The full entitlement per cycle — the worker earns the whole 15 (or 18) working days over the 12-month cycle.
- Accrual as they work — one day of leave for every 17 days worked (or one hour for every 17 hours). This is useful for staff who start part-way through a year.
Either way, an employee builds up leave as they go — a new employee is not entitled to the whole year's leave on day one.
When leave must be taken
Annual leave must be granted within six months after the end of the leave cycle in which it was earned. The employer decides when leave is taken (usually by agreement), but cannot simply refuse to let it be taken at all. Leave may not run concurrently with sick leave or notice.
Payout on termination
When employment ends, any accrued but unused annual leave must be paid out. This is the one time the law requires leave to be converted to cash. Working out the exact figure means knowing how much leave the worker had accrued and how much they had taken — so an accurate running balance matters.
Tracking leave without spreadsheets
Leave balances are the single most common thing employers lose track of, and the most common thing staff dispute. WageDesk keeps a live annual-leave balance for every worker, lets them request leave from WhatsApp, and shows the balance on every payslip — so the number is never a guess. See how WageDesk works, or read up on sick leave and what must be on a payslip.