Annual leave is a period of approved absence with pay from official duties. It is intended to allow the employee vacation, rest and recreation. It is also intended for the employee’s use in attending to personal or emergency business, to extend the time available to the employee under some other leave programs, and for use with specific military leave entitlement. An employee may receive donations of annual leave from fellow employees and employees of other agencies, and may donate annual leave to employees of this and other agencies through the leave transfer program.

Accrual of Annual Leave Full-time employees on a common tour of duty. All full-time employee’s assigned to an 80-hour tour of duty shall earn and be credited with annual leave for each full biweekly pay period.

Loss of leave accruals based on nonpay status – A full-time employee earns leave during each full biweekly pay period while in a pay status or a combination of pay and nonpay status. However, a full-time employee is not entitled to accrue leave whenever he or she amasses enough hours of absence in a nonpay status during one leave year to equal the number of base-pay hours in one pay period (e.g., 80 hours). The loss of leave accruals must be equal to the amount of leave that is earned in one pay period at the employee’s current annual leave accrual rate.
For example, if a full-time employee in a six hour leave category is in nonpay status for the entire pay period or reaches an increment of 80 hours (e.g., 160, 240, 320, etc.) of nonpay status during the pay period, the employee would not accrue six (6) hours of annual leave for the pay period. (Note that full-time employees in the 6-hour annual leave earning category who lose leave accruals due to nonpay status hours in the last full pay period of the leave year, will lose the full 10-hour annual leave accrual.) Additional absences without pay have the same effect if they again add up to an increment of 80 hours before the end of the leave year. Hours in a nonpay status which are not sufficient to require a loss of leave accruals are dropped at the end of the leave year.

Crediting Accruals Annual leave accruals shall be credited at the beginning of each pay period.

No leave entitlement for certain employees Employees who have no regularly scheduled tour of duty may not earn leave.

Maximum Accumulation of Annual Leave

Employees stationed in the United States Except as provided in this paragraph, the maximum amount of annual leave which a full-time employee may accumulate and carry forward to a succeeding year may not exceed 30 days (240 hours) at the beginning of the first complete biweekly pay period occurring in any year.

Return from overseas post – When an employee leaves an overseas post in which he or she has been eligible for a maximum accumulation of 45 days (360 hours) of regular annual leave, the maximum amount of regular annual leave that he or she may carry forward into the next leave year shall not exceed 360 hours. The amount which shall be carried forward is the amount to the employee’s credit at the end of the pay period which includes the date on which the employee departs from his or her post of duty.

This maximum accumulation continues as the employee’s personal leave ceiling for carryover to succeeding years until such time as the employee carries a smaller accumulation of annual leave from one year to another. At that time, this smaller accumulation becomes the employee’s new personal annual leave ceiling, unless this accumulation is less than 240 hours in which case, 240 hours becomes the employee’s leave ceiling.
Illness – Annual leave which was properly scheduled (or rescheduled) and approved for use before the end of the leave year and which must be forfeited solely because of an employee’s illness occurring or lasting so late in the leave year that the leave could not be used shall be restored in the amount the employee was prevented from using

Annual leave restored for this reason must be credited to a separate leave account and must be scheduled and used no later than the end of the leave year which ends two years after the date the employee is determined to be recovered and able to return to duty; otherwise it is again forfeited without the possibility of restoration. An approving official shall not restore leave forfeited because of illness when:

• The employee could have reasonably foreseen the absence which would preclude the use of excess annual leave as in planned surgery or therapy or normal maternity cases);
• The employee neglects to reschedule annual leave not used because of illness;
• An employee recovers soon enough to use excess annual leave; or
• The illness was that of a family member and not the employees.An employee retains the option to have an absence recorded as annual leave rather than sick leave but not retroactively. Where appropriate, a supervisor should remind a sick employee of this option when it appears that the employee may end the leave year with excess annual leave. The employee should be made aware of the value of saving the sick leave and the difficulty of having to use restored annual leave along with regular accrued leave in the year ahead. However, a decision to use sick leave which results in a forfeiture of annual leave will not preclude the employee from requesting restoration.Leave Management software is an automated system which helps HR department to manage leave approval, cancellation and track annual leaves of all employees