Sick Leave: How Many Days, and When You Need a Certificate

Almost everyone believes they get a fixed number of sick days a year. That belief is wrong twice over: the entitlement is not annual, and it is not a fixed number.

Sick leave in South Africa runs on a 36-month cycle, and within each cycle you are entitled to the number of days you would normally work in six weeks. For someone on a five-day week that is 30 days across three years. On a six-day week it is 36. The Act sets a formula, not a figure, because the figure depends on your week.

Alongside it sits a second, smaller entitlement that far fewer people use: three days a year for family responsibility, which is what you reach for when a child is ill. For anyone raising a child on a working salary, those three days are worth knowing about before you need them.

And there is a rule about medical certificates that is narrower than most employers apply it.

The 36-month cycle

Your sick leave cycle is the period of 36 months' employment with the same employer, beginning either when you started work or when your previous cycle ended.

That has consequences people find counter-intuitive.

It does not reset in January. Nothing about the calendar matters. If you use your full entitlement in the first year of a cycle, you have no paid sick leave left for the following two — which is why the entitlement should be thought of as a three-year budget rather than an annual allowance.

Equally, unused days are not lost each December. They remain available until the cycle ends.

Your first six months are different

During the first six months of employment, the full entitlement does not yet apply. Instead you accrue one day's paid sick leave for every 26 days worked — roughly a day a month.

At the end of that period the full cycle entitlement takes over, but the Act allows your employer to reduce your first cycle's entitlement by the days you already took during those first six months. So the early days are an advance against the cycle, not an addition to it.

What a sick day pays

A day of sick leave is paid at the wage you would ordinarily have received for work on that day, and it must be paid on your usual pay day. Not later, and not as a separate arrangement.

There is exactly one lawful route to being paid less than that, and it is a trade, not a reduction. An agreement may lower the daily amount only if all three of the following hold:

• the number of paid sick days is increased at least commensurately with the reduction;
• the daily amount is at least 75% of the wage for the ordinary hours you would have worked that day; and
• the total for the cycle is at least equivalent to the ordinary entitlement.

In other words, an employer may spread the same value over more days at a lower daily rate, subject to a 75% floor. It may not simply pay you less.

The certificate rule, precisely

This is where most disputes start, and the section is narrower than the practice.

Your employer is not required to pay you if you have been absent:

• for more than two consecutive days; or
• on more than two occasions during an eight-week period,

and, on request by the employer, you do not produce a medical certificate stating that you were unable to work for the duration of the absence on account of sickness or injury.

Three things follow from the wording.

A single day off does not require a certificate. Nor does a second one. The trigger is more than two consecutive days, or a third occasion within eight weeks.

The employer has to ask. The section operates where the employee, on request, does not produce a certificate. A blanket policy is not the same as a request, and payment cannot simply be withheld without one.

The certificate must cover the duration of the absence. A note confirming you attended a consultation is not the same as one stating you were unable to work for the days you were away.

As to who may issue it: the certificate must be issued and signed by a medical practitioner, or any other person certified to diagnose and treat patients who is registered with a professional council established by an Act of Parliament. That is broader than "a doctor" — it turns on registration with a statutory council — and it is worth checking rather than assuming, in either direction.

One protection applies to employees who live on their employer's premises. Where obtaining a certificate is not reasonably practicable, the employer may not withhold payment unless it has provided reasonable assistance to obtain one.

A work injury does not come off your sick leave

This is the provision worth knowing before you ever need it, because it protects the balance you will want later.

Sections 22 and 23 do not apply to an inability to work caused by an accident or occupational disease as defined in the compensation legislation — except for any period during which no compensation is payable under those Acts.

Read that carefully. If you are hurt at work and the compensation system is paying, those days are not deducted from your sick leave. Your sick leave is for ordinary illness; a workplace injury is a separate system with its own payments.

The exception matters too. Where that system pays nothing for a period — and it makes no periodical payment for a temporary disablement lasting three days or less — the ordinary sick leave rules apply to that period instead. So a very short workplace injury does come off your sick leave, and a longer one does not.

If your employer has been deducting a workplace injury from your sick leave balance while the compensation system was paying, that is the section to raise.

Three days for family responsibility

A separate and much smaller entitlement, and one that lapses if unused.

It applies if you have been employed longer than four months and work at least four days a week for that employer. If so, your employer must grant you, during each annual leave cycle and at your request, three days' paid leave, which you may take:

• when your child is sick; or
• on the death of your spouse or life partner, or of your parent, adoptive parent, grandparent, child, adopted child, grandchild or sibling.

Four practical points.

It runs on the annual leave cycle, not the 36-month sick leave cycle — the two do not share a clock.

You may take it in part-days, which is what makes it usable for a school pick-up and a doctor's appointment rather than an entire day off.

Your employer may require reasonable proof of the event before paying.

And unused days lapse at the end of the annual leave cycle in which they accrue. Unlike sick leave, this entitlement does not carry forward.

One change worth flagging: family responsibility leave used to cover the birth of your child. That paragraph was repealed with effect from 1 January 2020 and replaced by the parental leave regime, so a birth is now dealt with under those provisions rather than these three days.

A collective agreement may vary both the number of days and the circumstances, so check yours if you have one.

These rights do not depend on what you earn

Worth stating plainly, because it differs from the working-time rules.

The Minister's earnings threshold determination excludes higher earners from a specific list of sections — ordinary hours, overtime, compressed weeks, averaging, meal intervals, rest periods, Sunday pay, the night-work conditions and one of the public holiday rules.

Sick leave, proof of incapacity, the occupational-injury carve-out and family responsibility leave are not on that list. They apply regardless of your salary.

The one exclusion that does apply to this chapter is at the other end: it does not cover an employee who works less than 24 hours a month for that employer.

If it goes wrong

1. Work out your cycle dates, not your calendar year. When did your current 36 months begin?
2. Ask for your balance in writing, and check it against the formula for your working week.
3. Check whether a certificate was actually requested, and whether the absence met the two-day or third-occasion trigger at all.
4. Check whether any workplace injury was deducted from that balance while compensation was payable.
5. Check the daily rate. Anything below your ordinary wage requires an agreement meeting all three conditions, including the 75% floor.
6. Keep the certificates, and make sure each states you were unable to work for the whole period of the absence.

Where you are off sick for an extended period and unpaid, the unemployment insurance system has its own illness benefit — our guide to what UIF pays and how to claim explains that process. If a dispute becomes a disciplinary or dismissal matter, our guide to how the CCMA works sets out the forum. And if you are reconstructing what you were actually paid across a period of absence, our payslip generator lays out the fields your payslip is required to show.

For everything else, start at our money guides.

Frequently asked questions

How many sick days am I entitled to in South Africa? The number of days you would normally work during a period of six weeks, in every 36-month sick leave cycle. On a five-day week that is 30 days over three years; on a six-day week, 36.

Is sick leave an annual entitlement? No. It runs on a cycle of 36 months' employment with the same employer, beginning at commencement or at the end of your previous cycle.

What about my first six months? During the first six months of employment you are entitled to one day's paid sick leave for every 26 days worked, and your employer may reduce your first cycle's entitlement by the days you took.

Do I need a doctor's note for one day off? Not on the face of the section. An employer may withhold payment only where you were absent more than two consecutive days, or on more than two occasions in an eight-week period, and you fail to produce a certificate on request.

Who may issue the certificate? A medical practitioner, or any other person certified to diagnose and treat patients who is registered with a professional council established by an Act of Parliament.

What must the certificate say? That you were unable to work for the duration of your absence on account of sickness or injury.

How much must I be paid for a sick day? The wage you would ordinarily have received for work on that day, on your usual pay day. A lower daily amount is lawful only under an agreement that increases the number of days commensurately, keeps the daily amount at 75% or more of your ordinary wage, and leaves the cycle total at least equivalent.

I was injured at work. Does that come off my sick leave? No, except for any period during which no compensation is payable under the occupational injury legislation — which includes a temporary disablement lasting three days or less.

What is family responsibility leave? Three days' paid leave in each annual leave cycle, for an employee employed longer than four months who works at least four days a week, available when the employee's child is sick or on the death of a spouse or life partner, parent, adoptive parent, grandparent, child, adopted child, grandchild or sibling.

Does family responsibility leave carry over? No. Unused entitlement lapses at the end of the annual leave cycle in which it accrues.

Does family responsibility leave cover the birth of my child? Not any more. That paragraph was repealed with effect from 1 January 2020 and the position is now governed by the parental leave provisions.

Do these rights fall away if I earn a lot? No. The earnings threshold determination excludes higher earners from the working-time sections, not from sick leave, proof of incapacity or family responsibility leave.