The below post is taken from the Video Blog, the Subject Matter Minute. You can view the episode on YouTube if you would like. Find it here: Episode #69 – Sick Leave Donations
If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive. (I would prefer you view it on YouTube, so I know how many people have watched)
You can also listen to an audio version.
Hello and welcome to the 69th episode of the Subject Matter Minute. For those of you who have been along for the entire ride…. Thank you! It’s been over seven years and fittingly, if you were with me for that first episode on Longevity Pay, you have received at least one bump in pay because of it. Go back and check out the first episode if you don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s what started it all.
Sometime in the past, I guess right before covid, I told you all that my generous parents were taking my entire family on an Alaskan cruise. Well, as you can imagine, covid killed that. Well, this is the year we got it back on the schedule. We just finished up a 7 day trip on a Celebrity Cruise!
Apparently we are very lucky travelers. We had cloudless skies and temps in the 70’s for 6 of the 7 days. This is unheard of… It was beautiful and really allowed us to see everything.
While I’m not entirely sold on the cruise type vacation, it was a fabulous way to see and experience Alaska. What an amazing place. We also had a great time with my family. Everything went really well.
The problem with cruises, of course, is the amount of people. Our boat “only” had 2300 people on it. Which is somewhat manageable for doing things on the boat, but when you pull into port at these small Alaskan towns, and there are 2-3 more giant cruise ships there, you really cannot experience anything but people. I’m guessing that over 10,000 people got off in Juneau, a town of only about 30,000.
However, we were lucky enough to score a table at the Alaskan Brewery in Juneau and had a uniquely Alaskan experience… A bear literally ran through the brewery! We heard a commotion and thought somebody was fighting, but then saw a man yelling and chasing a small bear out the far side of the brewery… went right through the brewery! So that was fun!
Oh, and speaking of Covid and too many people… 3 of us, including me, got covid at the end of the trip. I know… surprise right? Unheard of on a cruise ship…. (sarcasm)
And being sick is a perfect segue to today’s topic! Today we are talking about Sick Leave Donation! (music)
First of all, I don’t need any… I’m fine! Having said that…..
Most of you have probably seen the emails that go out about donating sick leave. I’m not sure how it worked with all agencies before, but we now have a statewide sick leave donation policy that has standardized the process for all agencies. (Thank you HRD!) I think this is a fabulous policy. The ability to help our fellow State employees at their greatest time of need makes my heart feel good. I’m guessing that there are some long term employees out there (and maybe a few others) that have been blessed with excellent health and have a few extra hours tucked away. And you can’t take it with you. Literally… the state only allows you to cash out a certain amount when you retire or leave employment.
Just so you know… when you leave employment at the state, you can cash in half of your sick leave, up to 480 hours total. OR, you can put the value of that same number of hours into your 457 retirement plan. Either way, you are only taking 480 hours with you… so to speak.
While it’s true that it would be nice to have as much as possible if you were to get sick or need some sort of ongoing treatment, personally, I think the good Kharma of spreading it around might be a better trade. Obviously, we need to keep a nice pile for ourselves, but hoarding sick leave when we are doing well and others aren’t seems kind of selfish. No judgment! Probably just me dealing with my own issues. But I’ll tell you that it does feel good to donate sick leave. Generally, I do it for those in my agency, but I’ll sometimes go outside my agency if it seems like a position that doesn’t pay much.
Ok, enough guilt trip, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of the policy.
You can find the links to, first of all, the A&I page that has all the links down in the show notes. I’ve also broken out the links to the policy and the process and then the necessary forms… so the sick leave request form and the sick leave donation form.
The bottom line is that any employee in the Executive branch who has exhausted all accrued sick leave, comp time, vacation leave and all other available leave, and who has no documented history of abusing leave, and who has a legitimate medical reason to be absent, may request sick leave donations.
To start the process of asking for donations, we talk to our supervisor. Then our supervisor completes the State of Wyoming Sick Leave Donation Request form (PER-2) and submits it to HR. It’s actually PER dash 2, but being a superfan of MASH, I just wanted to say stroke. If you watch, you’ll understand. 🙂
Next, HR does what they do… a little verification and such. Then HR and the involved supervisor decide the “level of request.” Donation requests can go out to the division only, or the full agency or the entire state.
But before sending out the request, HR obtains approval from the Agency head. If the agency head denies it for any reason, then the HRD admin must approve the denial. The only way it can be denied is if it meets the reasons in the policy and procedures or the personnel rules. Something like documented abuse of leave, or not having a legitimate medical reason to be absent.
After this, the donation request is sent out and you and I have an opportunity to give, give, give. So, if we decide to give, we fill out the sick leave donation form PER-2-A and submit it to our agency HR rep.
Then HR does what they do… a little verification and such. They verify that we have a minimum of 80 hours accrued after the donation amount. They also verify that we are donating within the rules of how much we can donate. We can donate a minimum of 4 hours up to 16 hours of sick leave per calendar year to the same person. Now if the person requesting leave is an immediate family member, we can give as much as we want as long as we still have the 80 hours in our account after giving.
Then, the donation needs to be approved by the Agency Head. Which again, can only be denied if it goes against the requirements listed in the Personnel Rules or there are documented abuses of leave.
Then HR does what they do. Which at this point is quite a few things! You can see the list on the procedures document. And then they take the sick leave out of our accounts and transfer it. If, for some reason it doesn’t get used, they will get it back to us as well.
So… that’s probably way more info than you needed, but if you still need more information, you can take a look at both the policy and the process as I have linked to those documents in the show notes.
As an aside, I once got a thank you note from someone that I donated to, and it really made my day. So, if you are unfortunate enough to need to get sick leave donations, consider contacting HR to find out who the kind souls were and throw them a little thank you.
Ok, that’s it for today! Having been floating on the ocean for a week and also dealing with some good old fashioned Covid, I’m way behind on my emails, so I gotta start digging! I’ll see you next time!