Employees donating paid time off

dgoeb

I have an employee who would like to donate vacation time to another employee who has to take medical leave. I am interested in knowing any potential pitfalls in allowing this sort of thing. Thank you!

Gar

In my previous life (private industry), donating paid time-off wasn't allowed. I now work for a county government in North Carolina where employees are allowed to donate paid sick leave to their colleagues. This is subject to the approval of the County Manager. Moreover, the County Manager may advance up to thirty (30) days of paid sick leave to an employee who has exhausted her/his accrued allotment of paid time off (vacation, comp, etc.). The advance can only be used for time off due to an accident, major operation, illness or the funeral of an immediate family member. Should the employee leave the payroll prior to paying the advance back, the salary equivalent is deducted from her/his final pay check. I'm not sure if advancing/donating paid time-off is a common practice in government. Hope this helps.

gus

The State of Iowa has a policy in place that allows donated vacation time for an employee with a catastrophic illness or a family member with same.(medical certification required). It is donated hour for hour and the agency deals with the budget issues when those donating are at a lower rate of pay. Lots of record keeping but a great policy when needed!

fjk

Gus - would you give me a little more information on this. We are struggling with our own policy on donating PTO and don't want to reinvent the wheel unless we have to.
Thanks

susan macias

Our health care organization allowed the practice of donating PTO for awhile, but stopped about a year ago when administration of the benefit became unwieldy and some employees questioned the fact that others received a greater benefit than they did. "No good deed goes unpunished!"

dhnyct

After HR research and discussions with our CPA, we adopted a policy to allow employees to donate PTO to another employee in need.

First of all, the donating employee has to complete and sign a form. The "gift" is the actual value of the PTO hours at the donating employee's rate of pay. (Posting "hours" rather than "dollars" corrupts the YTD "hours worked" by the recipient.) Taxes are the responsibility of the recipient.

To date the system has worked extremely well. The good will it creates more than compensates for the limited amount of administration.

System

Our company recently dealt with this issue for the first time. We decided to pay the donor through payroll, have the donor handle all taxes and deductions, then make a cash gift to the recipient for the net amount of the vacation time. Seemed to be the cleanest way. The recipient was on LTD, and could not show any earned income.

Mike Maslanka

these are all good ideas...but there is another side to the equation...the employee doing the donating may implicitly believe that the favor will be returned...not so...and there are morale problems as a result...more importantly,an employee needs vacation time and sick leave---their performance may suffer and it may impact their pocket book...perhaps a better route is to offer enhanced disability plans to employees at a reduced rate;that is, something employees can do for themselves before problems strike...mike

gus

To fjk: Sorry I have been on vacation. Call me at 319-398-3675 for info. Ask for Stewart.

Angie

Dear Gus:

We are county employer in Washington. We allow donation of sick leave for extreme medical conditions and financial harship. Employees can donate up to 120 days sick leave. It is calculated at donating employee's hourly rate, so the recipient can potentially receive more than 120 days at their hourly rate. It has traditionally been used for terminally ill persons, but a couple exceptions have been made. I personally believe it should be vacation leave donation rather than sick leave donation (vacation is the employee's, but sick leave is more an insurance policy in my opinion), but I've only been here about 6 months and am the first HR person. Recently this has backfired on us significantly. Before I came aboard a major exception was made and a second round of 120 days donation was made to a terminally ill employee. Once this second round was exhausted, the employee was not able to return to work in any capacity (bedridden) and thus employment terminated. We now have a claim for damages (ADA related) from the employee and fellow employees are quite upset that their generosity has been answered by this claim. The employee was on paid leave with benefits in tact for 15+ months (including employee's own accumulated sick leave). Be careful when writing your policy. Generally, I think its a good idea, but it needs to be as black and white as possible. Hope this helps. Have a nice day.

Regards,

Angie

fjk

gus - tried to reach you at that number without luck (?)

bspohrer

We give employees additional leave if they need additional time off for family / health / etc reasons. Also, we realize that our employees are important to the success of our firm and helping them limit or eliminate "non-work" related stress and concern benefits the firm.
Lastly, there was some abuse in the begining but the employees knew that they had a good thing and they policed themselves.

WO

As a public employer in Washington we allow employees(donors) to donate vacation to an employee(recepients)for use as sick leave. Certain criteria must be met such as the recepient must have exhausted all eligible leave and demonstrate that the physical or mental condition is severe and will cause them to receive leave without pay or termination.

It is used sparingly and only in severe cases. It would be much more heavily utilized if donors were able to donate sick leave.

Bd of Ed

We are a public school district. Our policy on donation of sick days is as follows:
1. Employees donating to such pool have the option of either giving up one day or more of their annual personal leave or sick days.
2. Employees giving up sick leave days will have their maximim accumulation permanently reduced by the number of days they contribute to the sick leave pool.
3. It is mutually understood that a pool, once created, would be available only for use by the individual for whom the pool was created.
4. All donations of personal leave or sick leave shall be on a strictly volunteer basis.

This has been a helpful benefit for a number of our employees.