A partly recovered employee asks for a week away. She normally works 36 hours, currently returns for 18, and wants to know how many holiday hours will disappear. The employer wants to be fair. Payroll wants a number. Meanwhile, the weekly roster already has gaps.
This familiar question sits where employment law, payroll and reintegration meet. Employees continue to accrue statutory holiday during full or partial sickness. When they take holiday while sick, they receive full pay, even where sickness pay would otherwise be 70 percent.
Employer and employee must also keep their reintegration arrangements current through the Plan of Action. A small payroll query therefore becomes a wider business decision. The leave request, holiday category, wage treatment, working pattern and reintegration record should all describe the same week.
When those records drift apart, correction work often arrives later. Memories have faded, the leave balance has moved on and each party may remember the arrangement differently.
The calculation is only the surface
Dutch law distinguishes between two holiday situations. An employee may become sick during holiday that was already agreed. Or an employee who is already sick may ask to take holiday. The written arrangements and treatment of the days can differ.
When sickness begins during pre-agreed holiday, the affected days generally remain sickness days. The employee can agree that they count as holiday days. A collective labour agreement can also provide a written arrangement for above-statutory holiday. The consent and the category of leave matter.
When an employee asks for holiday while already sick, the employer handles it as a holiday request. The employee receives full pay for those days. Where active reintegration duties apply, the holiday can also provide a temporary release from them.
The leave balance needs the same attention. The statutory minimum equals four times the employee’s weekly working hours each year. Accrual continues during partial sickness. Above-statutory hours can follow different arrangements under an employment contract or collective labour agreement.
ADV is another category. Its treatment follows the applicable employment arrangement rather than the statutory holiday rules by default. That distinction matters when one payroll code hides several very different forms of time off.
For statutory minimum holiday during partial sickness, the full contractual duration provides the starting point. The daily calculation must still fit the roster, work pattern, applicable agreement and type of leave. Irregular shifts can turn a simple number into a reconstruction exercise.
Choosing six hours or nine hours may feel decisive. It is not decisive if payroll uses the wrong balance, misses the wage effect or records a roster that no longer matches the Plan of Action.
One absence can reshape a small company
CBS reported sickness absence of 5.8 percent in the first quarter of 2026. Among businesses with fewer than ten employees, it reached 2.8 percent, up from 2.6 percent a year earlier.
Those percentages look modest until one person represents a quarter of the workshop, half the customer desk or the only employee who knows a critical client. Small companies experience absence in names, tasks and missed handovers, not only in percentages.
Return to the employee on a 36-hour contract. Her 18-hour reintegration schedule may already require colleagues to cover calls, deliveries or appointments. A week of holiday can mean temporary help, postponed work or the owner returning to the floor.
That does not weaken her right to request time away. It does mean the owner needs to see the whole cost before setting the roster. Full holiday pay can replace a lower sickness-pay percentage, affecting the wage bill as well as the leave balance.
A large organisation may absorb that change quietly. In a five-person company, it can appear at once in available cash, a delivery date, a customer promise and the owner’s own working day.
Most trouble begins with fragmentation. The manager sees permission for holiday. Payroll sees hours. The occupational-health process sees a gradual return. The employee sees earned time. Each view is legitimate, but the company needs one record of what happened.
Keep medical detail out, but keep the records together
The employer needs operational facts: agreed work capacity, working times, adjusted duties, requested leave and the resulting payroll treatment. Medical assessment belongs with the company doctor or occupational-health service.
A tidy sickness record does not require diagnoses or private clinical detail. It requires a clear account of the arrangements that affect work, pay and leave.
The routine can remain short. The written request identifies the dates. The employer records the decision and the leave category. Payroll checks whether the balance is statutory, above-statutory or ADV, and whether holiday pay differs from sickness pay.
The company then compares that result with the current Plan of Action. If the holiday raises a practical question about recovery or reintegration, the occupational-health route can address it without turning the manager into a doctor.
After the employee returns, the arrangement may need another look. UWV expects employer and employee to discuss reintegration progress regularly, at least once every six weeks, and amend the Plan of Action when needed.
A holiday may leave the return schedule unchanged. It may also show that the old schedule no longer fits the work, the employee or the business. That is a practical reason to review the record promptly, while the week away is still clear to everyone involved.
The employee in this example should return to a company that knows what it deducted, what it paid and which hours she is expected to work next. Her manager should not be reconstructing those answers from emails after payroll has closed.
A clean record is a business control
Sound administration earns its place here. It protects the employee from an unexplained loss of holiday. It protects the employer from wage corrections, disputed balances and a confused reintegration history. It also gives the owner a reliable view of staffing and cash.
The sensible response is not a heavier procedure for every absence. It is a clean connection between the request, the contract, the right leave category, payroll and the live return-to-work arrangement. When those records agree, a week away remains what it should be: a human request handled with care, rather than a small entry that grows into a large argument.
Need a second check on a sick employee’s holiday request, payroll treatment or reintegration record?
The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Paolo Maria Pavan. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Paolo Maria Pavan before publication.
