Sick Day Carryover...?

Ixtapa99 · December 2002

The policy for sick days has changed numerous times throughout my employment with this company. Currently, hourly employees accumulate 1/2 sick every other month giving them a total of 6 per year. If these days are not used by Dec 31st, the company pays out in January and a bonus thus giving incentive to not call in sick.

My boss is now thinking about allowing employees to carry over their unused sick days for a couple of reasons...

1. We recently have had a couple of employees who are out due to medical reasons. They have used up all of their pay benefits and will be going a few weeks without pay until the first of the year when things start over. They could have benefited from a carryover policy.
2. Continuing to pay employees for unused sick time in January is putting a financial strain on the company (especially right now).

I'm a bit skeptical about this but if anything is going to change it really needs to be done within the next couple weeks in orderto give employees a heads up. Do any of you have a sick day carryover policy that you can share with me? What happens when employees accumulate quite a bit of sick days and begin abusing the time off? Thanks for any help you can offer! #-o

Christel

Rockie · December 2002

You hit the nail on the head with the sick leave abuse concern. I don't think I have ever worked anywhere with a sick leave plan that wasn't abused. This is why a lot of companies are going to the PTO plan so that employees can manage their time better.

We have a generous plan where our employees get 16 days the first year. On their first anniversary date, they get six more days. We have a maximum carryover of 45 days. If employees take little time the first and second year, they can bank up a considerable amount of time Our problem is most employees take the leave as fast as they earn it and then get upset when they have a sickness and don't get paid for it.

I encourage employees to build up their bank of leave to at least 2 weeks and keep this cushion in reserve (just like a monetary bank account). In this way, if they get the flu or something, they will still get their full paycheck. This falls on deaf ears most of the time, but at least we don't have 10-12 days a year that these same abusers can use in addition to their vacation time.

Ixtapa99 · December 2002

Mornin' Rockie!

Thanks for answering. Sounds like a good plan to me! I would give anything to have all time off benefits rolled into a PTO bank so I wouldn't have to track all of these different types of days off. What do you pay out when an EE terms? I think I read somewhere (maybe here somewhere) that Illinois has some weird rules about paying out accrued time at time of term with PTO banks. We just can't afford that. Right now, if an EE terms, they get their accrued vacation but forfeit any sick time or personal day that's unused.

Christel

Lori B · December 2002

If you lump everything into a PTO bank, you will have to pay it out at termination in Illinois once the time is accrued. IDOL looks at it like just one big bank of vacation time. Watch out for your reference to "personal days." Same thing applies. If challenged, you would have to pay them out at termination too.

We don't use carry over policy. My accountants shot it down b/c it created a liability to carry on the books. It created more of an administrative headache than it was worth from that standpoint. We do payouts for unused sick days at end of the year though.

dotato · December 2002

Our sick leave policy differs slightly between union, and non-union, but is materially thus:

*All employees earn 6.67 hours/mo
*All employees may accrue up to a max of 1,280 hours
*Employees may sell back,on a graduated scale, sick leave each April
*Upon termination in good standing, employees will be paid 50% of accrued sick leave at the employees current rate
*Employees may transfer no more than 40 hours annually to another employee, or to a general sick leave bank
*Employees have the option of using sick leave to buy pension credits

Employees accrue vacation time on a fiscal basis, and it expires (legally) at the end of every fiscal year.

Our sell back works thus:

*Employees can not sell back an amount that would leave them with less than 160 hrs in their accrued bank
*0-319 hours bought at 15% of current rate
*320-399 hours bought at 30% of current rate
*400-1,120 hours bought at 50% of current rate

So, if someone wanted to sell back 10 hours, we would pay them 10 hours at 15% of their rate, hourly or salaried.
If someone wanted to sell back 350 hours, we would pay them 319 hours at 15% and 31 hours at 30% of rate, etc...

dotato · December 2002

Sorry forgot to mention industry; local government, Illinois.

EB

Margaret Morford · December 2002

If you are going to stick with a sick leave program, I agree with the person above - institute a sick leave buy back program. We did at our company and bought sick days back at two for one with a limit as to what you could sell back each year. We also required the employees to have built up a certain amount of sick leave before they could sell any back. They got to sell once a year on their anniversary date, which spread out the financial impact and allowed us to get a liability off the books at half its value. If an employee left the company, they were paid nothing for their sick days. We had a lot of people begin to accumulate sick leave for the first time once the sick days represented cash to them. I'll send you the plicy, if you will e-mail me.

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

Sick Day Carryover...?

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