# When HR goes on leave, the deadlines do not URL: https://skillsforce.com.sg/insights/hr-cover-maternity-medical-leave-singapore Title: HR and payroll cover during maternity or medical leave | Skillsforce Description: Maternity, paternity and medical leave entitlements in Singapore, and how to keep payroll and HR running while the person who runs them is away. Updated 18 August 2026. First published 18 August 2026. Author: Skillsforce (People-operations team) Category: hr-operations Government-Paid Maternity Leave runs 16 weeks. A serious medical leave can run just as long. Both are the employee's right, not the problem. The problem is when the person on leave is also the one who runs payroll and HR, because CPF, IRAS and MOM do not pause for either. ## How do I keep HR and payroll running when the person who does them goes on maternity or medical leave? Government-Paid Maternity Leave is 16 weeks, and paid medical leave can run up to 60 days a year. Neither pauses CPF, still due on the last day of the month, or IRAS and MOM filings. The employer needs someone with the access and knowledge to keep those deadlines met while the usual person is away. ## Key points - Government-Paid Maternity Leave is 16 weeks regardless of birth order: the employer pays the first 8 weeks, the government reimburses the last 8 (all 16 weeks are government-funded from a third child). - Paternity leave is 4 weeks, not 2, for children born on or after 1 April 2025. A lot of published guidance still quotes the old 2-week figure. - Shared Parental Leave adds 6 weeks from 1 April 2025, rising to 10 weeks for children born from 1 April 2026, split between both parents. - Paid sick leave (14 days) and hospitalisation leave (up to 60 days, inclusive of the 14) are not government-reimbursed. The employer bears the full cost, unlike the three parental schemes above. - None of these deadlines pause CPF, IRAS or MOM filings. CPF stays due on the last day of the calendar month whether or not the person who normally files it is at their desk. - A handover planned before a known leave date is a different job from one built after an emergency medical leave. Only one of them gives you weeks of notice. Government-Paid Maternity Leave runs 16 weeks. A serious medical leave, the kind that follows surgery or a long hospitalisation, can run just as long, sometimes longer. Both are the employee's right, and neither is the problem. The problem is what happens to the business while the leave runs, when the person going on leave is the one who runs HR and payroll. CPF does not pause because the person who submits it is out. Neither does an IRAS filing, a work-pass renewal, or a bank payment run. A lean team with one HR or payroll person has, in effect, built a single point of failure into the calendar, and maternity leave and medical leave are the two most common ways that point of failure gets tested. It is also an ordinary way, not a rare one: a single HR or payroll person is standard practice at 10 to 150 employees, and a pregnancy or a medical event is a normal part of anyone's working life. ## The leave itself, in exact figures Four schemes cover an employee's own leave, and enough has changed in the last two years that a fair amount of published guidance is out of date. **Government-Paid Maternity Leave (GPML).** An eligible mother of a Singapore citizen child is entitled to [16 weeks of GPML](https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/leave/maternity-leave/eligibility-and-entitlement), the same 16 weeks whether it is her first, second or a later child. Eligibility turns on service, not marriage: at least 3 continuous months with the employer before the birth. If the child is not a Singapore citizen, the fallback is 12 weeks of maternity leave under the Employment Act instead, on the same 3-month service test. Who pays depends on birth order. For a first or second child, the employer pays the first 8 weeks at gross salary with no reimbursement, and the government reimburses the last 8 weeks, capped at S$10,000 per 4-week block, up to S$20,000 for that child. For a third or later child, the government reimburses all 16 weeks from the start, up to S$40,000. **Government-Paid Paternity Leave (GPPL).** Paternity leave is 4 weeks, not 2, and has been [since 1 April 2025](https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/leave/paternity-leave). Births from 1 January 2024 to 31 March 2025 carried 2 weeks mandatory, plus a further 2 weeks only if the employer agreed voluntarily; that voluntary half became mandatory on 1 April 2025. Eligibility again turns on 3 months' service and on the father being lawfully married to the mother between conception and birth, or within 12 months of it. The government reimburses all 4 weeks, capped at S$2,500 a week, up to S$10,000. **Shared Parental Leave (SPL).** A newer scheme lets both parents split leave between them: [6 weeks](https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/leave/shared-parental-leave) for a Singapore citizen child born from 1 April 2025, rising to 10 weeks for a child born from 1 April 2026. It is taken within 12 months of the birth, split however the parents choose (an even split by default), and reimbursed to the employer at up to S$2,500 a week for whichever weeks each parent takes. **Sick and hospitalisation leave.** Medical leave sits on a different scheme entirely, and it is not government-paid. An employee covered by the [Employment Act with 6 months or more of service](https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/leave/sick-leave/eligibility-and-entitlement) is entitled to 14 days of paid outpatient sick leave and up to 60 days of paid hospitalisation leave a year, and the 60 days include the 14 rather than adding to them. Under 6 months, the entitlement is pro-rated: 5 outpatient and 15 hospitalisation days at 3 months of service, 8 and 30 at 4 months, 11 and 45 at 5 months. Unlike the three parental schemes above, none of this is reimbursed. The employer carries the full cost of sick and hospitalisation leave, with no claim-back from anywhere. One detail is easy to miss: maternity, paternity and shared parental pay are ordinary wages for CPF purposes. The leave does not remove a payroll line, it adds one. Whoever runs payroll is filing CPF on the absent employee's own leave pay as well as everyone else's, on the same last-day-of-month deadline as always. Medical leave sometimes runs past the statutory 60-day cap, and what happens after that point is not set by MOM at all. It becomes a matter of company policy, any group insurance the employer holds, or unpaid leave agreed between the two of you. None of that changes the calendar underneath it. Payroll still needs a monthly run, someone still has to authorise it, and CPF is still due on everyone who remains on the books, whether or not one of them is unpaid that month. An absence that runs long is exactly where a documented handover starts to matter more, not less, because the gap it is covering keeps getting longer. ## The deadlines that keep running anyway None of the four schemes above pause a business's own obligations. CPF contributions are still due on the last day of the calendar month, whoever is on leave, with the 14th of the following month as the enforcement threshold rather than the deadline itself. The Auto-Inclusion Scheme filing to IRAS is still due 1 March if the company has five or more employees. Skills Development Levy is still owed on every payslip. A work-pass renewal that happens to fall in the same quarter does not wait for a replacement to be found. That is the real continuity risk, and it has nothing to do with whether the leave itself is generous, expected, or entirely deserved. It is an access and knowledge problem: does anyone else hold the Corppass rights, the bank file, and the calendar of what is due when? In a lean team, usually not. The same single-point-of-failure risk shows up in [what to do when the only person who runs HR and payroll leaves the business altogether](/guides/only-hr-person-resigned), except leave is a milder version with one important difference: the person is coming back, so the plan has to keep the seat warm rather than replace it. ## Planned leave and emergency leave are different handovers Maternity leave gives real lead time. At least 4 weeks' notice is expected before GPML starts, and in practice a pregnancy usually gives an employer months, not weeks, to plan (under-notice can also reduce the maternity payment itself, which is as much an incentive for the employee as for you). A handover built during that window can be unhurried: pass on Corppass admin rights, document the CPF and IRAS calendar, run a dry test of the bank payment file, and brief whoever is covering on anything unusual due in the coming months, a bonus run, a work-pass renewal, an IR21 for someone leaving. Extended medical leave rarely offers that courtesy. A hospitalisation, an accident or a serious diagnosis can take someone out with no notice at all, and the handover then has to be reconstructed by someone else rather than explained by the person who actually knows it. Having that access, those procedures and a named second person already in place, before any date is on the calendar, is the standing arrangement we set out in [what backup HR actually means](/insights/what-is-backup-hr-singapore). ## What has to be covered while they are away When we step in to cover a maternity or medical leave, the first things we secure are: - **Access.** Corppass admin rights and the CPF, IRAS and MOM portal logins reassigned so nobody is locked out. - **Payroll continuity.** The pay run, CPF contributions and the bank payment file kept to the usual cadence and due dates. - **Statutory filings.** Anything due inside the leave window, IR8A, IR21, AIS, work-pass renewals, filed on time rather than held back for the person's return. - **Employee matters.** The questions, claims and day-to-day people issues that do not stop just because HR is on leave. - **A clean handback.** Processes and access returned to the original person on their return, with nothing lost or left undocumented in between. None of that is difficult in a single week. Doing it for sixteen consecutive weeks, without the person who normally does it, is what cover actually means. ## Who runs this while they are away We provide [interim HR cover](/services/hr/interim-cover) for exactly this kind of gap, maternity leave, medical leave, or any stretch where the usual person is out and the calendar will not wait, and we run [payroll processing](/services/payroll) alongside it so CPF and the pay cycle do not depend on any one person's presence. Cover can start as soon as a leave date is confirmed, or on short notice if it was not. If you would rather plan the handover yourself, the order above (access, payroll, filings, employee matters, handback) is the sequence to work through, and our [continuity playbook](/guides/people-operations-continuity-singapore) covers the wider version of the same problem. Either way, the deadlines above are not negotiable, regardless of who is covering them. ## Frequently asked questions ### How many weeks is Government-Paid Maternity Leave in Singapore? 16 weeks, for an eligible mother of a Singapore citizen child, the same whether it is her first, second or a later child. Eligibility requires at least 3 continuous months of service with the employer before the birth. If the child is not a Singapore citizen, statutory maternity leave under the Employment Act is 12 weeks instead, on the same 3-month service test. ### Is paternity leave 2 weeks or 4 weeks in Singapore? 4 weeks, and has been since 1 April 2025. For children born from 1 January 2024 to 31 March 2025, the entitlement was 2 weeks mandatory, plus a further 2 weeks only if the employer agreed voluntarily. For a child born on or after 1 April 2025, the full 4 weeks is mandatory, and the government reimburses the employer for all of it, capped at S$2,500 a week. ### What is Shared Parental Leave and how much is it? Shared Parental Leave (SPL) lets both parents split extra leave between them: 6 weeks for a Singapore citizen child born from 1 April 2025, rising to 10 weeks for a child born on or after 1 April 2026. It is taken within 12 months of the birth, and the government reimburses the employer up to S$2,500 a week for whichever weeks each parent takes. ### How many days of paid sick leave and hospitalisation leave do employees get? An employee with 6 months or more of service is entitled to 14 days of paid outpatient sick leave and up to 60 days of paid hospitalisation leave a year, and the 60 days include the 14 rather than adding to them. Employees with 3 to 6 months of service get a pro-rated entitlement. Unlike maternity, paternity or shared parental leave, none of this is government-reimbursed: the employer pays it in full. ### Who runs payroll and HR while the usual person is on maternity or medical leave? Whoever covers needs the same access the absent person had: Corppass admin rights, the CPF, IRAS and MOM portal logins, and the calendar of what is due when, plus the ability to run the pay cycle and file on time. A handover built before a known leave date can be planned calmly. An emergency medical leave means reconstructing that access after the fact, which is why documenting it in advance matters even when leave is not yet on the calendar. ## Sources - [MOM: Maternity leave, eligibility and entitlement](https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/leave/maternity-leave/eligibility-and-entitlement) (Accessed 18 August 2026) - [MOM: Paternity leave](https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/leave/paternity-leave) (Accessed 18 August 2026) - [MOM: Shared Parental Leave](https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/leave/shared-parental-leave) (Accessed 18 August 2026) - [MOM: Sick leave, eligibility and entitlement](https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/leave/sick-leave/eligibility-and-entitlement) (Accessed 18 August 2026) ## Related - [Interim HR cover](https://skillsforce.com.sg/services/hr/interim-cover) - [When your only HR person resigns](https://skillsforce.com.sg/guides/only-hr-person-resigned) - [Continuity playbook](https://skillsforce.com.sg/guides/people-operations-continuity-singapore) - [Payroll processing](https://skillsforce.com.sg/services/payroll)