Annual Leave
Under the Employment Ordinance, employees are entitled to annual leave if they have been employed continuously by the same employer for four weeks or more, with at least 18 hours worked in each week.
An employee’s entitlement to annual leave is dependent on the duration of their employment, increasing by 1 day per year from 7 days after their first and second year of employment, to a maximum of 14 days after the ninth year onwards.
As leave cycles and entitlements on the system are based on employees’ appointment dates, please ensure that these are entered correctly. For more information about how to enter / change an employee’s date of appointment, please go to:
Note that the Ordinance allows an employer the option to base the leave year on an employee’s appointment date, or to use a nominated 12 month period as a “common leave year” to calculate annual leave entitlements for all its employees. This may be either by reference to a calendar year or some other 12-month period elected by the employer.
When an employee commences employment on a day other than the first day of a common leave year, so that the employee has achieved service of less than the full duration of a common leave year, the Ordinance contains a provision to calculate a pro rata leave entitlement (with any fraction of a day rounded up).
The daily rate of annual leave pay is a sum equivalent to the average daily wages earned by an employee in the 12-month period preceding the first day of annual leave. If an employee is employed for less than 12 months, the calculation shall be based on the shorter period.
For more information about how the average daily wage is calculated, please go to:
For more information about annual leave, please see the Labour Department website.
Note: The above discussion relates to the statutorily mandated minimum annual leave conditions. Employers are free to agree to more favourable leave terms when negotiating employment contracts.