Sick leave

Reporting illness, medical certificates, and OR Art. 324a salary continuation.

Sick leave is handled separately from other absence because two things follow from it that nothing else triggers: a medical certificate obligation, and a statutory salary-continuation entitlement that depends on how long the person has worked for you.

Reporting

An employee reports sick from the portal or the iOS app; HR can report on their behalf. What is recorded is the absence period, whether it is illness or accident, and — where relevant — whether it concerns a child.

The report is open-ended until the person returns. A sick leave that runs across a month boundary is handled correctly by payroll without being split by hand.

Medical certificates

Most Swiss employment contracts require a certificate from a defined day of absence. The platform tracks the requirement, chases it, and stores the document against the sick-leave record.

A medical certificate is health data — the most sensitive category the platform holds. Access is checked per request through the sick-leave certificate access rules, not merely hidden in the UI, and the file name shown is a neutral display name rather than anything diagnostic.

Salary continuation (OR Art. 324a)

Swiss law requires the employer to continue paying salary for a “limited period” when an employee is prevented from working through no fault of their own. The length of that period grows with service years, and courts apply one of three regional scales.

The applicable scale defaults from the employee’s canton and can be overridden per employee — for example where a GAV specifies one.

Years of service are half-open ranges — 1–2 means “at least one year, less than two” — which is exactly how the platform resolves them.

Berner scale

The most widespread, used in BE, AG, SO and others.

Years of service	Weeks
0–1	3
1–2	4
2–4	9
4–10	13
10–15	17
15–20	22
20–25	26
25 and over	30

Basler scale

Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft — more generous in the early years.

Years of service	Weeks
0–1	3
1–3	9
3–10	13
10–15	17
15–20	22
20–25	26
25 and over	30

Zürcher scale

Zürich — starts at three weeks and grows steadily.

Years of service	Weeks
0–1	3
1–3	8
3–10	13
10–15	17
15–20	22
20–25	26
25 and over	30

The three scales converge from four years of service onwards. They differ exactly where most disputes arise — the first three years.

What the platform computes

For a given employee and date it resolves the scale, the service years, and the weeks of entitlement, and reports how much of that entitlement the current absence has consumed. The employee can see their own entitlement in the portal; HR sees it on the record.

Daily-sickness-benefit insurance (KTG)

Where a KTG policy exists, the insurer takes over after the agreed waiting period and the employer’s obligation changes shape. The insurance contracts configured under payroll master data determine how the absence is reflected on the payslip and in the declaration.

Sick leave in payroll

Illness and accident route through different Lohnarten — recording an accident as illness produces a wrong payout and a wrong declaration. The absence type carries through to the run automatically, which is why the distinction is made at reporting time rather than at payroll time.