Policy on giving sick days to ee with serious illness

GLC · July 2004

One of our employees approached me about allowing our employees to give sick days away to ee when they run out of sick leave and have a serous health condition. I wanted to know what the experience has been like for others who do this. What liability issues are there on this, if any?

pork1 · July 2004

We only grant 48 hours of sick time each year and we pay it out annually on Nov 1. We discussed but decided that our sick hours are so few, we would not want any employee to give a limited number of hours away to another employee, who might have a greater need at the moment. Sick hours only come on November 1, each year. Once awarded they can be used by the employee when they or their children are sick and the employee needs to be off. Since FMLA was presented to the employer as law, then need to hold onto sick time for the concerned employee to be used in the 1st two weeks of an FMLA situation has become even more important for the employee to retain all awarded sick hours. I do not recommend an across the board policy be established. I would recommend the company deal with the charitable good wishes of one employee on behalf of a fellow employee on a case by case basis without a lot of discussion. Payroll can easily make the adjustment and drop hours from one employee and provide the hours to another employee, as needed. Just make sure the action is documented and filed, accordingly with the losing employees request and agreement and witnessed signatures. Sick hours are a company benefit and not covered or mandated by Federal Law, but once provided by company policy one needs to be clear and consistent in one's administration of the benefit>

PORK

deniseE · July 2004

We just visited this idea. The main issue for us (beyond the management of such a "sharing" system)...was that you could possibly have an employee that earns far more per hour donating time to an ee receiving less pay. We weren't sure how to keep the system in balance with the books.

In the end, we've moved forward, but limited participation, so far, to our union-eligible employees....we've not started the program yet and we don't have an official policy...but I'd be happy to share the policy, once approved by legal.

Yahoo · July 2004

I've found this practice to be a royal pain in the.......well, you know.

As a general practice, we do not allow employees to give PTO or sick to another. On a rare occasion, we have allowed a PTO donation - but only with extremely severe circumstances. I can only think of twice that we said yes - once when an employee's house burned to the ground while he was at work and the other employee had a two-year old with a terminal brain tumor who required multiple hospitalizations, etc. When it did come up - we set some pretty strict guidelines (depending on the individual situation) and kept it extremely quiet and limited to a small group of people.

Was it the right thing to do? Yes. Should we have done it from an HR standpoint? Probably not.

marc · July 2004

We allow the donation of vacation time in the event of a catastrophic leave situation. The EE in need must approach our ED with the problem. If the ED agrees with the need, an email is put out to the staff indicating than an EE has met the standard for catastrophic leave and is looking for donated hours.

Our staff is great and usually stand up and donate. We bring the donation in at the hourly rate of the donor and give it out at the hourly rate of the donee.

We only allow the use of vacation hours because they are "earned" in our shop and sick leave is not. It is a great little safety valve for certain situation. We are a small shop so the admin is not particularly burdensome.

dchr9203 · August 2004

We don't have sick time, only PTO. But we do allow employees to donate up to 24 hours of PTO to a fellow employee for an extended illness or surgery. Personally, I would recommend against allowing the donation of sick time unless your company accrues and books it (like vacation). Otherwise, its a negative hit on your direct labor costs.

KD13 · August 2004

We do not have sick days but I have had the same type of question concerning donating vacation time. What we told those employees, who wanted to donate the time, is because of the difference in hourly rates, they could put what time they wanted to donate on their time card. Then when they cashed their check, they could take the extra money and donate it to the person.

marc · August 2004

I am not sure how big a deal this is, but the effect of what you are doing keeps the income tax and payroll tax consequences with the donating employee instead of the EE receiving the benefit, and the donating EE does not get to write it off as a donation. If you allow the hours to transfer, then the receiving EE has all the tax consequences.

bchapin · August 2004

We have a sick leave donation policy we call "sick leave bank". With this an employee can donate up to 5 days per year and an employee can receive up to a maximum of 60 donated days within a 5 year period. We have 2 union contracts that allow this benefit and we think it is wonderful. The only criteria to be eligible is that the employee receiving the donation has to have exhausted all of their own sick days. We have really been able to help some employees with this benefit who would have otherwise had to take time off without pay which they would then loose time towards years of service, vacation accrual etc.

Policy on giving sick days to ee with serious illness

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