Sick time for ill children?

Dianna

Question for you, as we are currently in the process of revising our handbook - how many of you out there allow employees to use their accrued sick time for illness of a child?

What do you see as potential problems/good points to doing this?

Thanks for your input.

CuriousG

My current employer does not provide paid sick days. However, in a previous life, my employer did, and a very generous schedule I might add. Each year an employee was entitled to a specified schedule of "full-pay" and "half-pay" benefits, that grew to cover a full 52 weeks by the end of 10 years of service.

We allowed those "sick days" to be used more like a PTO bank. The employee could use them for their illness, or the illness of a family member. They were also usable for things like Doctor's office appointments, and the like, and in as little as one hour increments.

A couple of potential problems can arise: First, if you are going to restrict these to medically necessary events (doctor's visits, illness and injury) then someone is going to have to administer a lot of paperwork. In effect this becomes an extention of your Family Medical Leave program. You will accumulate medical information on not just employees, but their family members as well, and you must maintain those in an extremely confidential manner.

The second issue is for emloyees who have not built up a very large time off "bank". These employees may take several individual days for other family members only to find they have exhausted their paid time off when their own illness arises. After the first year this is not as important from an "entitlement to leave" standpoint as it is an economic issue. It generally took an employee about five years before their "bank" could be big enough that the economic issue was not there except for really major situations.

Gar

We're a local government and, officially, we don't allow it although some departments wink, look the other way and permit it. I suspect it's because the majority of the employees in those departments are women and, among them, there's a substantial number of single mothers whose support systems probably aren't as deep as married parents'. As CuriousG points out, for our eligible employees, this is an FMLA matter since we require employees to use sick and vacation time off for FMLA events.

SandiF

Maybe this is just a Washington state law, but I thought it was federal as well. Sick leave can be used to take care of children under the age of 18.

Dianna

Margaret Morford, if you happen to read this thread, can you answer this question? Is that a federal law?

System

I'm not Margaret, but I'll tell you it's not a federal law. It might be a state law that gives time off for family things that aren't serious enough for FMLA. Sometimes called a "small necessities law."

As for Dianna's question, I don't like a system where vacation and sick leave are separate and you can use sick leave for kidcare. That penalizes healthy, childless employees. And face it -- parents will take time off for sick kids no matter what it takes. If your system requires them to lie to their boss to get the day off, they'll do it.

Our company combines vacation and sick leave. If I take a day off for my sick kidling, that's one less vacation day I have. It's a good system if your total amount of leave is enough.

James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers

Dianna

James, thank you for your response - as well as the others that have responded thus far. Your responses will be printed and forwarded to my director. I appreciate it!!

OHI182

I agree. A dedicated employee is usually a dedicated mother or father also. Don't take a chance on losing a good employee because they have a sick child. We also have a PTO system that combines sick, vacation, and personal days into one package. This has worked well for us.

SandiF

Thanks for your answer James, that allowing employee sick leave to be used for children is not a federal law. Washington is a very employee friendly state. We recently implemented a new sick leave policy. Prior to this, we allowed employees to buy out their sick leave at half their pay at the end of each year (to a maximum of 80 hours). Now we have given the option of buying out accrued sick leave at full pay, or converting it to vacation. It is based on a maximum of 40 hours. However, we only do this if after the buy out, the employee still has at least forty hours of acrrued sick leave. We give 10 sick days each year.

Our employees are very happy about the new policy.

Margaret Morford

Dianna,

I have been out of town speaking at a conference and just returned this evening. Sorry to be so long in replying. Besides FMLA, there is no federal law requiring this. As you can see from some of the replies, some states do mandate this.

As a practical matter, I recommend that you let employees use sick time for themselves or their sick children. If you don't, you just encourage the parent to call in and tell you they are sick rather than tell you their child is sick. I also think you look like a monster if you don't let the employee have time off to care for their child. Please call me if you want to discuss further.

Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]

atherese

In Minnesota we are required if 20 or more employees (again not sure if it is our State law or federal) to allow use of sick leave for a child under 18 or under age 20 who is still attending school.

We also allow use for others in family: "sick leave is permitted for illnesses or injuries of the employee, employee's child, spouse, and/or parent. Sick leave granted for child, spouse, and/or parent shall be for reasonable periods as the employee's attendance may be necessary." We have not had any abuse with allowing sick leave for others but do always reserve the right to request in addition to the employee's own statement, a doctor's statement verifying that the time off was due to actual illness/injury.

Down_the_Middle

We do not offer employees any paid sick time for the illness of a child. While we offer sick time for employees, our position has been that employees who are medically unable to work s/b entitled to income continuation via sick leave. The employees absence due to a child's illness (while understandable and very common) is not viewed to be something that the employer should subsidize. We allow employees to use their personal time (vac, PTO, etc) for this type of absence and have no current plans to add sick time for the illness of any immediate family member.

For me, it's a question of how can I spend limited benefit dollars in the best manner. I don't currently see this as a benefit essential to recruitment or retention.

Gillian

This is one where employers should catch up with work life in the 2000's - actually earlier than that. Work life is not the same today and problems away from work affect work - a lot of the problems that parents have revolve around their children, sick or otherwise. Employers who do not address this issue pay for it in terms of lost productivity, morale, time off in other ways, etc. It benefits the employer when the employer is understanding of issues that occur in an employees away from work life. The payback is employee appreciation and loyalty. Of course there is the exception, the employee who takes advantage but the exception is just that, an exception.

Here is California a recent regulation required employers who have a sick leave plan which applied to employees only to allow half of the amount to be used for family illness. Most employers who hadn't done so already changed their policies to allow family illness to be covered up to the limit of the plan - no distinction between self and family. The administrative burden of trying to track leave in two separate pots, self and family, was a bit much.

Margie

I disagree with down-the-middle's comment that this is not a recruitment or retention factor. Our company now offers PTO so it can be used for whatever we need. But before we did that, we allowed employees to use their sick time if their child, spouse or parent was ill. It does boost morale and as Gillian said, employees will be more willing to be loyal and feel appreciated and happy that the company they work for is family friendly. Those that abuse it ARE the exception and of course Companies would deal with those that do.

A lot of our new employees how companies that they worked for previously were not family friendly and one of the reasons that they applied at ours is because they hear from current employees that we are.

WOCO Frank

Without a doubt, it is a retention issue here.

To add to something Margaret touched on...

Chances are, many employees are claiming to be sick when it is actually their children. That creates several problems. One is that employees become conditioned to lie to their supervisors, knowing full well that many other employees are doing it too (I'm not making a value judgement here one way or another... just citing reality). Another problem is that many supervisors know their employees are lying and feel too much compassion to do anything about it. If the employee calls in sick with a "nudge nudge wink wink," and the supervisor returns the "nudge nudge wink wink", then you've got a system in which the supervisors and the employees are looking the other way. That's never good.

Roberta

I work for a child welfare agency with approximately 400 employees. Our policy is to allow sick time (12 days/year)to be used for a health condition either for any immediate family member including the employee. This is in addition to vacation time, which is accrued at a different rate based on seniority. We also have a "Sick Leave Bank" for extended leaves. It is based on an application/approval system for up to 30 days per year/100 days maximum throughout employment. The "Sick Leave Bank" is generated by donations from other employees (i.e. an employee donates one of his/her sick days to the bank). This system works well for us. It is definitely one of recruitment strategies.

Gillian

Roberta - could you fax me your policy re. the sick pay bank. That is on my agenda and am collecting information. 909-469-5538 Thanks.