Sick Leave Benefits - What is out there?

Jessica

I work for a small credit union (17 total employees). We currently have a generous sick leave policy. Each employee accrues 3.70 hours of sick time for every two week pay period. That is a total of 96.2 hours of accrued sick time each year.

While this is a great policy for most employees who use the time as intended and bank it for scheduled doctor's appointments, serious illness, and emergencies. We are faced with two problems. First, there is the occasional employee that views accrued time as days off to be used for every little thing. We try to address those instances on a one by one basis as performance issues within the other policies in place, but that doesn't always work perfectly and this tends to be a bigger problem with new or newer employees. Second, we do suffer some slips in productivity due to the number of sick days taken by some employees during the year.

My question is, what type of accrual systems do other employers use? Credit unions in particular would be helpful, but all responses are needed? For example, does anyone have a tiered policy such as 4 hours per month for x number of years and then 8 hours per month from then on? Does a policy regarding excessive absence seem like a better approach in order to keep the employees who are using the time appropriately from feeling that they are being punished for the behavior of the few?

Thank you for any input!

Gracie

We are a 251-employee private org with a sick leave policy with accrual up to 80 hours per year. New hires' sick time start to accrue only after 3 months.

These unused sick leave per calendar year at year-end closing goes into their short-term disability accounts at a rate of 1:1.5. This somewhat gives some the incentives to store up their sick days. Employees know that the unused sick time will NOT be "wasted".

While a great majority of our people do not take sick leave unnecessary, there will always be some 20% of them exhausting all their sick leave. Since the policy allows sick leave of 10 days per year, employers should not classify any amount of leave taken below this threshold as "excessive". We should have already factored all these in (productivity loss) when we come up with the policy.

Excessive absenteeism from employees, when a pattern is noticed, should be handled as progressive discipline with proper documentation. The word "excessive" should be defined and managed fairly across the departments.

Min

We are a Public Hospital in Washington State and we accrue 8 hours per month from date of hire (can not use until 90 days after employment). We do have a policy in place that employees may use sick for self, spouse (significant other), children or parents. We also have in the policy that we may ask for a doctors note upon return forom 3 days off. It is difficult to justify some- but most of our staff do not abuse the system- if they do not have the time available they may use vacation or unpaid time off.

Hope this helps.

Gillian

We are a private non-profit university with 375 employees. Our policy is accrual of one day per month to a cap of 60 days. The leave is available for self and family - broadly defined. We are also in the process of putting in place a donated sick leave plan where employees can donate to a pool which can then be used for catastrophic illness when someone runs out of both vacation and sick leave. As with everyone else, there is a small group who will abuse any policy. We take the position that we won't punish the majority who are here for the university and the students, by putting in place attendance policies or disciplinary action just to cover those who abuse. If a particular circumstance creates a performance problem, the supervisor will ask for guidance and it will be dealt with as a performance issue.

AnneLa

I am from a 170 employee credit union. We allow our employees to accrue up to 6 sick days per year, 4 hours per month, after 90 days of employment. They can carry it over into a sick bank until they reach 160 hours. This is meant to be a bridge until our STD policy kicks in. We also have our abusers, but we have a seperate attendance policy that addresses someone who takes advnatage of time off - either paid or unpaid.

Rockie

I work for a health care facility and we rolled all our time off benefits (excluding holidays) into a PTO bank. We have a generous amount (15 days a year for the first year and then 21 until you reach the five year point). This cuts down tremendously on people using their "sick leave" for reasons other than sick. It is crucial for health care faciities, in particular, to have adequate staffing and this system cuts down on employees calling in sick, especially on Mondays and Fridays.

I have never worked anywhere that employees did not abuse sick time to some extent and some use it as vacation or "mental health days". If you do continue to use a sick leave plan, I would cut it down to so many days per year, say five or ten and then limit the accrual or allow no accrual. Whenever people accrue a huge bank of leave, they tend to expect either payment for it or, if they know they won't get any type of payment for it, they tend to use it i lieu of vacation time.

At one point in my life, I worked for a credit union and there was a tremendous amount of time off (11 paid holidays, four weeks of vacation, sick leave accrual, etc.). They did run into massive problems with huge sick leave banks and massive abuse of the use of sick time. They finally had to limit the amount of sick leave to so many weeks per year of employment.

Jessica

My thanks to all of you who responded! I am new to HR and I learn so much by reading postings in this forum. The responses so far have been a great help.

Thank you!