Sick leave in Philippine private employment is usually a company or CBA benefit. It is not a Labor Code rule that every employer must grant a fixed number of paid SL days. Covered employees may still have statutory Service Incentive Leave that can be used for illness. Those two ideas must stay distinct in policy and in software. TimeBoxHR is designed to support tracking SL separately from SIL, with its own entitlement policy, credit balance, and path from an approved request into DTR and payroll.
Last reviewed: September 2026.
Government rules and contribution schedules may change. This article is provided for general information and should be verified against the latest official government issuance before payroll processing.
This article is part of the employee leave benefits cluster. It does not turn company SL into a statute, and it does not tell you to deny paid time when SIL or a CBA already covers the day.
Company sick leave is not a universal legal mandate
Many reputable employers in the Philippines grant paid sick leave. Employees come to expect it. None of that converts SL into a nationwide statutory day count. If your handbook promises 10 SL days a year, you administer 10 SL days. If it promises none, you still must administer SIL for covered employees who can use those five days for sickness, and you still must follow other statutes such as maternity leave when those facts exist.
The compliance error is the sentence “Philippine law requires 15 days sick leave.” That sentence is not a safe basis for a policy or for software defaults. The safer sentence is “we grant SL as company policy, and we separately honor statutory leaves that apply.”
A CBA can make SL mandatory for that bargaining unit. Read the CBA before you copy a generic 15-day template.
How sick leave relates to Service Incentive Leave
SIL may be used for sick, vacation, and other leave purposes. Company SL is an extra bank if you created one.
Write the charging order. Examples that employees can follow:
- Use company SL first for illness; use SIL only if SL is exhausted and policy allows SIL for sickness
- Use SIL first until the statutory five days are gone, then company SL
- If VL of at least five days already satisfies SIL, use company SL for illness and company VL for vacation, and do not invent a third SIL bucket
TimeBoxHR is designed to support separate SL and SIL types so that order is visible on the balance and on the request. A single “credits” number cannot show whether the statutory floor is still intact.
Vacation leave should not be the default medical code. Charging VL for a fever because “SL is empty” is a policy choice you should write down. Silent substitution makes year-end conversion and final pay harder to explain.
Accrual and waiting periods are policy
Company SL accrual follows the same design questions as VL. You may grant 10 days on 1 January, accrue 10/12 of a day each month, or vest SL only after regularization. How to calculate leave credits walks through mid-year hires, leave without pay, and rounding.
A waiting period (no paid SL in the first three months) is a company rule. It does not postpone SIL’s one-year statutory mark. Do not tell a 14-month employee that “probationary waiting” still blocks all paid illness time if SIL has already vested and policy allows SIL for sickness.
Some employers allow SL to accrue only for days actually paid. Long LWOP then pauses SL credit. That is coherent if the accrual batch can see unpaid days. If the batch ignores attendance, you will grant SL through a three-month unpaid absence and argue about it later.
Medical certificates and privacy
Policy may require a medical certificate after two consecutive days, or for every SL day, or only when the absence touches a rest day or holiday. Those thresholds are employer controls for abuse and for return-to-work fitness.
Ask for what you need to administer the leave: dates of incapacity, fitness to work, and any workplace restriction the physician states. You rarely need a full diagnosis in a shared leave folder. Store certificates under the company privacy policy. Limit operational access to people who approve attendance or compute pay.
Do not build a public blog-style intake that invites employees to type diagnoses into a comment field that every supervisor can export. A leave type, date range, and an attachment held under privacy rules is enough for DTR.
Paid SL, unpaid sick days, and SSS sickness
Paid SL uses the company daily-rate method you document. How to compute leave pay covers the idea that not every leave uses the same peso treatment.
When credits are exhausted, further illness is typically unpaid unless another paid type applies. Record unpaid sick days clearly on the DTR so payroll can deduct them for monthly-paid staff.
SSS sickness benefit is a separate government benefit with contribution and notice rules. It may become relevant for longer illnesses. It is not a substitute for encoding the attendance event. Confirm current SSS instructions before you treat an SSS payment as if it automatically replaces company SL or SIL on the register. Do not assume the offset method you used five years ago still matches the agency.
Maternity leave and special leave for women are also not company SL. A gynecological surgery or a childbirth is not “charge 60 days of SL.” Those statutes have their own duration and pay sources.
Approval after the fact
Illness is often reported on the morning it starts. Your process should allow a request after time-in was missed, with the same audit trail as a planned VL. If the employee never files, the DTR will show absence. Cleaning that after payroll computation without an adjustment record is how SL balances and tardiness policies both lose integrity.
Partial-day SL (half-day clinic visit) needs an hour rule. If you only allow full-day SL, say so, and use undertime or official business for short medical trips if that is the real policy.
Carry-over and conversion
Company SL is often use-it-or-lose-it. That is lawful as a company design. It is not how unused SIL is generally treated. If you forfeit SL on 31 December, do not also forfeit SIL sitting in the same cell.
Conversion of unused SL to cash is a generosity or a CBA term. If you convert, use a stated rate and a stated moment (year-end, anniversary, or separation only). Employees will compare the SL conversion rate with the SIL commutation they heard about. You should be able to explain the difference in one sentence: one is statute, the other is policy.
Abuse controls without turning HR into a clinic
Repeated Monday SL, SL that always touches a holiday, or SL without the certificate the policy requires are attendance issues. Handle them with the written rule, coaching, and the same DTR evidence you would use for any absence. Do not publish employee medical details in a group chat as a deterrent.
If SL is denied because the certificate is missing, the day becomes unpaid or unauthorized absence according to policy. The DTR should show that result, not a silent delete of the absence.
Holiday-adjacent sick days
SL that always starts on the workday before a regular holiday, or that always covers a Friday and a Monday, is an attendance pattern worth reviewing. It is not proof of abuse by itself. Confirm punches, certificates, and the written rule before you reclassify a paid SL day as unpaid.
If policy says a certificate is required when SL touches a holiday or rest day, apply that rule every time. Selective enforcement is what employees remember.
A sick day that falls on a regular holiday should follow the same written holiday-and-leave interaction you use for VL. Do not pay holiday work premiums for a day the employee was ill at home.
Return-to-work and partial fitness
Some certificates say the employee may return with a restriction (no heavy lifting, limited hours). That is a schedule and safety question as much as a leave-credit question. If the employee works a half day, decide whether the other half is SL, undertime, or official medical follow-up. Write the hour rule so two supervisors do not invent two answers.
If the employee is not fit to return and SL is exhausted, the next days are unpaid or another applicable statutory leave, not a silent negative SL balance, unless you allow advances.
Records
Keep the SL entitlement, accrual method, charging order versus SIL and VL, requests, certificates under privacy controls, dates, remaining balance, and year-end forfeiture or conversion. Keep SIL on its own report if it is a separate type.
Employees should see SL remaining in the portal so they do not guess. Guessing produces VL charged as SL and the reverse.
A monthly SL usage report by department is useful for operations. It should show days and types, not diagnoses.
How TimeBoxHR Handles This
TimeBoxHR is designed to support a sick-leave type that is separate from SIL, assigned entitlement policies, leave credit balances, accrual batches, and manual adjustments. Employees can apply for SL and check SL balances in the portal without seeing a blended “credits” figure unless you chose to design one. Supervisors approve requests. Approved SL is designed to flow into DTR and payroll. Holiday calendars and configurable payroll rules stay available so a paid SL day and an unpaid sick day are not the same code.
Simplify sick leave tracking with TimeBoxHR
Create SL and SIL as two types. Put the charging order in the work instruction beside the screen. Run SL accrual on the company calendar you documented. When a certificate is required, record that the request is approved or returned, without turning the leave record into a medical chart. If a balance is wrong after a regularization or a data fix, use a manual adjustment with a reason.
TimeBoxHR does not decide whether a day is legally SSS-compensable or whether a physician’s note is sufficient. It is designed to record the leave type and dates you administer and to keep those dates aligned with attendance and pay.
Explore TimeBoxHR leave and DTR features, or start a 30-day free trial to see SL and SIL as separate balances in the same employee record.
