> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.hr-easy.nlead.ch/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# 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.

<Warning>
  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.
</Warning>

## 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 |

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

### 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](/guides/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.