Time Off

Holiday / vacation

You can take a vacation as spontaneously as you like - but keep the following rules in mind:

  • Get the "go" from your lead person & team early on.
  • Plan ahead. If possible: plan your vacation at least one iteration in advance.

Do not forget to

  • Communicate your vacation to your team.
  • Submit your vacation to kenjo.
  • Set your absence note and add a public out-of-office appointment to your Google calendar. Guidelines at the bottom of this page.
  • Make a vacation handover. You are accountable for ensuring that all tasks and issues have been handed over to your team.
  • Cancel your appointments (you can do this automatically through your out-of-office appointment in Google calendar.

Christmas Business

The period from October to January is clearly the period with the highest revenue in the store.

Even during the Christmas period, we have to ensure that all teams deal with critical bugs and problems promptly (on working days).

Our teams ensure this through self-organization.

Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve

For the hourly calculation on these days, please look in Kenjo on the respective day and submit the holiday according to our guidelines.

Overtime compensation

Same guidelines as for vacation apply. We offer overtime compensation as time off.

Important: Kenjo does not offer the option to convert overtime into time off by yourself. If you want to have it converted, please contact your lead/manager. Only after the conversion, you can request overtime compensation via Kenjo. Otherwise, unfortunately, the tool will track negative hours for overtime compensation.

Illness / Absence

First of all: If you're feeling unwell due to physical or mental illness, no one expects you to work. Don't hesitate to call in sick, whether it's due to physical health, mental health issues or your period.

If you need an overview of people on vacation or absent, you can use the calendar view in Kenjo or subscribe to the Kenjo calendar feed with your own calendar app.

Process

  • Send a message to your manager (before the daily).
  • Cancel your appointments on that day.
  • Let your manager know when you're back.
  • Report your illness via Kenjo
  • If you are absent for a longer period of time, make a handover with your team if possible. You can also set an out-of-office appointment in your Google calendar that automatically declines your appointments.

Formalities

The submission of the eAU (certificate of incapacity for work) is mandatory after day 3.

Important: If you are sick on a Friday and also on the following Monday handing in an AU is mandatory. This is independent of feeling well over the weekend or having a different illness on said Monday.

When you enter sick days in Kenjo, please make sure to add a short comment saying “with a sick note from .. to ..” or “without a sick note”. It's no longer necessary to upload an AU to Kenjo. The AU is now requested digitally by us from your health insurance companies. However, you still have the right to have the doctor provide you with the AU certificate in paper form, should there be any technical problems. Please always have this certificate issued to you and store it for at least one month.

Child illness

We know that having sick children can be an extra burden for an individual to deal with on top of their usual work. To give a bit of credit to all the parents amongst us, Thomann.io grants its employees an additional 5 days of leave to take care of their sick children per year, per child. To hand a day in, please use the additional absence rule for the child's sick leave in Kenjo and note the number of days used, for example 0.5/5, and the name of the child in the comment field when submitting an absence request.

The days don't have to be taken consecutively, they can be taken individually. These days are only valid for children up to 12 years of age.

The first 5 days in a year that your child is sick, you can take care of them at home, without having to get a doctor's certificate, and we will pay your salary as normal, no worries.

For any day after that, Thomann.io won't pay your salary as normal: you will need to get a doctor's certificate and get your salary for those day(s) reimbursed by your health insurer. You can usually get around 60-70% of the salary back from your insurer.

Illness during vacation

The worst that can happen is to spend your vacation being sick. Therefore, you can call in sick during your vacation to get the lost vacation days credited back.

The process differs from the standard process:

  • To get vacation days credited back, you have to get a doctor's attestation on day one
  • You have to hand in the attestation in Kenjo and with your health insurance
  • Also make sure to notify P&C about it, to have the days covered in the attestation credited back to you

This process goes for vacation within your home country and abroad. If you're abroad, you will have to visit a doctor there, too, on day one of your illness. You can look for more details on the website of your health insurance.

Illness after starting your workday

It happens to the best of us: you start your day motivated, but a few hours in, you realize you are physically or mentally unable to continue. In this case, slightly different rules apply compared to a standard sick day reported before your shift begins.

The "immediate notification" rule

Your health is the priority, but clear communication is mandatory the moment you decide to stop working.

  • Inform your Lead immediately via Slack, email, or call before going offline.
  • Don't "Disappear": Your team needs to know you are no longer available so they can adjust workloads or meetings accordingly.

Time tracking & Kenjo entry

Under German labor law, a single calendar day cannot be both a "working day" and a "sick day" simultaneously. Therefore, the day you leave early is handled as follows:

  • It counts as a working day: The day you stop early does not officially count as a "sick day" for the purpose of sick pay (Entgeltfortzahlung).
  • Tracking in Kenjo: 1. Actual Hours: Log the hours you actually worked until the moment you left. 2. Remaining Hours: Log the remaining hours of your shift as a second shift/entry in Kenjo. 3. Mandatory Comment: Add the comment "Sickness" to this second entry.
  • No Makeup Time: You do not lose these hours, and you are not required to "make them up" later. They are treated as an excused absence with pay.

Medical certificate (AU)

If you are still unable to work the following morning, the standard rules for medical attestations apply:

  • The "Next Day" Start: Your official "Sick Leave" (for documentation purposes) technically begins the day after you left work early.
  • The 3-Day Rule: According to your contract, if your inability to work lasts longer than 3 calendar days, you must provide a medical certificate. This certificate must be submitted no later than the workday following the third calendar day.
  • Electronic Certificate (eAU): In Germany, we retrieve your data via the electronic eAU system from your health insurance provider. However, you must still communicate the expected duration of your absence to your Lead.

Summary of actions

  1. Stop Working: Prioritize your recovery.
  2. Notify your Lead: Give a brief heads-up that you are leaving/going offline.
  3. Log your Time: Record the hours you completed AND the remaining hours in Kenjo (with the "Sickness" comment).
  4. Rest: If you are still sick the next morning, follow the standard notification process before your workday officially starts.

Special leave

Special leave is an essential aspect of our leave policy that recognizes the diverse needs and situations that you may encounter during your employment tenure. The purpose of special leave is to provide you with the flexibility you need to attend to extraordinary circumstances while maintaining job security.

For the following reasons we offer special leave:

  • Death of a relative (1st degree: spouse, child, parents) - 2 days
  • Wedding - 1 day
  • Birth of the child (fathers) - 1 day (day of birth)

Do not forget to:

  • Let P&C know that you are applicable for a special leave day
  • Submit your special leave to Kenjo (use the special leave rule) --> also possible after your return
  • Make sure to follow the basic vacation guidelines above

Communicating your absence

Don't forget to be transparent about your time off. While it's not necessary to mention the reason for your absence, it's important to communicate when you will be out of the office. Make sure to update your Slack status with an emoji like :palme: or use the predefined status and inform your contacts.

Set an out-of-office auto-response for your emails. Your auto-response should include the duration of your absence, who to contact as your substitute, or to whom the emails will be forwarded.

Not mandatory, but helpful: if you're able to, please also take care of this during long-term sickness.