Taking vacation

You must take your vacation in the year of accrual. If, as an exception, this proves impossible, you and your manager must agree in writing on how you will take the remaining hours. You must reach such an agreement before 1 April of the subsequent year. There are various ways to use your remaining vacation. You can:

• take extra holiday
• use the flexible working hours option
• convert your vacation hours into extra income through the Terms of Employment Individual Choices Model 
• use the long-term savings option

Booking vacation hours

Function-based contract

A function-based contract is an agreement you make with your manager about the results you must achieve, the tasks you must perform and your availability and attendance. You are then free to organise your time yourself. You do not register how many hours of vacation you take, and your vacation credit is automatically at zero at the end of the calendar year. If you become ill or incapacitated, you will need to reassess your annual agreement and the results you agreed upon achieving with your supervisor.

Request via Service Portal

Good Friday exchangeable

As of 2024, it is possible to exchange Good Friday for another religious, national, regional or local holiday or day of remembrance (for example; Keti Koti, Carnival or National Remembrance Day).

After consultation with your supervisor, you can withdraw Good Friday via the Leave application in Self Service. By default, this is booked as a day off in the system for all employees. Like Christmas Day and Boxing Day, for example, this day is not deducted from your leave balance. Immediately after withdrawing, you request the day for which you want to exchange as a day off in the Leave application. The same approval method applies to withdrawal and requesting as for other leave days.

There are some conditions for exchanging Good Friday:

• It is only possible to exchange Good Friday if this day is a regular, scheduled working day for you.
• The Leiden University buildings are closed on Good Friday. Are you unable to work from home? Then it is not possible to exchange Good Friday.
• As usual, you discuss the request to exchange Good Friday in advance with your supervisor and (if necessary) with your team.
• The request to exchange Good Friday must be made no later than 4 weeks before Good Friday. You cannot retroactively exchange a previously used day of leave for Good Friday.
• You can only exchange Good Friday for another day in the same calendar year.

Further instructions can be found in the Knowledge Item "Deleting Leave Requests" and the Knowledge Item "Submitting Leave Requests”. If you do not want to exchange Good Friday, you do not have to do anything.

Carrying vacation hours forward

You may carry forward accrued vacation hours to the next calendar year. From 31th December 2019 applies:

• Compensation hours: build with the flexible working hours programme, will be gone from 31th December of the same year. These are 96 hours at full-time basis
• Extra-statutory hours: will be gone after five years after the year you’ve got them. These are 80 hours at full-time basis.
• Legal holiday hours: will be gone from 1st July of the next year. These are 152 hours at full-time basis.

More details you will find on our page about the leave system.

Vacation while on maternity or sick leave

• Maternity leave
  You continue to accrue vacation during maternity leave.
• Sick leave
  You are allowed and expected to take vacation while on sick leave. If you want to take vacation, for instance if you wish to go on holiday while you are on sick leave, you must first consult your manager and possibly the University doctor. The doctor will consider whether there is any objection to you taking the vacation or going on holiday. Book this vacation in multiples of whole days. This therefore includes the hours for which you registered sick.

Your accrued leave at the end of your contract

You are expected to take any remaining vacation hours before your last working day. Discuss this with your manager.