A Leave Family groups related leave types into a recognizable category. When employees, managers, or administrators enter a leave request, Workday presents the leave family as the category under which its associated leave types appear. For example, an organization might create a Regulatory Leave family for jury duty, military leave, and statutory parental leave, while using a Company Leave family for bereavement or discretionary personal leave.
A Leave Type is the transactional configuration that defines the rules for a specific leave, including eligibility, validation, balance tracking, entitlement, and processing effects. It belongs to a leave family but does not perform the broader grouping function. Absence Family is not the delivered Workday component used for this purpose. Time Off Type categorizes time offs such as vacation or sickness and applies to the time off configuration model rather than leave-of-absence types.
Leave families improve navigation and reporting while allowing each included leave type to retain independent eligibility, entitlement, validation, and security configuration. Administrators create and maintain these categories through the Maintain Leave Families task.
Study Guide reference: Leave of Absence - Leave Families .