Donating sick time to fellow employee

[daggiesmom]

Hi All,

Does anyone here on our board work for a company that allows donating banked sick time to a fellow employee who is on FMLA leave? If so, please pm me with details - my office just came out with a policy that allows very limited transfer of time (2 sick days, and the donation person must also give back time to the company equal to what is given to the sick employee.) Lots of grumbling going on here.

Joanie

[carolhg]

I work for a large school district. We can donate one sick day of our eleven sick days per year to a sick day bank. There is a cut off date that you must donate by. Anyone who has donated and has used up their own sick days is eligible to draw from the bank. I was off work from January to the end of the school year in June. I did not draw any sick days from the bank because I had quite a few of of my own sick days to cover me. I have known teachers who have received several months of sick days from the bank. Once you draw from the sick bank, you do not have to pay any days back. It seems that almost everyone donates to the bank and very few teachers actually have a need to draw from the bank. Sick days can only be donated to the sick day bank and NOT to individuals.

[Donna G]

We don't donate sick time but we can donate our PTO (pain time off or vacation or holiday time )

Donna G

[blaze100]

Hi Joanie, I think California education code protects the right to donate as many sick days as you can spare to other employees. You might research your own state law code for info. Barb

[ursol]

My company allows us to donate our vacation time to fellow employees. I don't have any details about the policy but some folks have already offered me their time if I should need it.

Lilly

[Debi]

Joanie,

My company does not allow it- people had volunteered last year to do it to help someone out and they wouldn't do it.

I HAVE heard of others doing it though, and having to donate time back to the company besides giving the sick time out, sounds like a bit much. I mean 2 sick days should equal 2 sick days, most of the time you are doing it as a favor- shouldn't this just be done to promote teamwork and as a benefit to workers? WHY is the company getting any time besides?

Are you sure you don't work for my employer??

[daggiesmom]

These are interesting replies concerning sharing time off. It seems to me that by requiring the employee to give back to the company as well as to give to another employee DISCOURAGES employees from doing this. Who would want to give out twice? This is truly not in the spirit of teamwork. I do like the idea of a General Bank, as it discourages favoritism - all people can draw from it. That is equal in my view. This "policy" came out yesterday and frankly, I think it was done to make the HR Director look like she's actually working. But I'm very cynical about the whole place anyway. Thanks everyone for the interesting input.

Joanie

[chloesmom]

We do have instances where we can donate sick time, but it is determined on a case by case basis by our city manager. We have a very, very generous sick leave benefit (starting at a day a month for every month accrued, and going up to 10 hours a month and then 12 hours a month for every month worked). And, there never is an upper limit of accumulation.

Some people who work at my place of employment feel that day every month is theirs to take a day off, and are always running on empty. Then, something big happens when they are really in need of sick time, and instead of having a good number of hours, they have nothing and want other employees to donate.

I should add too, that before we resort to not paying people, we use their vacation, comp time, etc once they run out of sick time. But, those people who never have any sick time in the bank also seem to burn through their vacation and comp time as soon as they earn it.

We've had this occur a few times, and sometimes donating days for the employee has been approved, and sometimes it's been denied. Knowing the history of those approved and those denied, I've never had a quarrel with the decisions the city manager made.

But, to get off my soapbox and answer your question, we sometimes are able to donate sick time for a fellow employee, and it's just on a day donated basis. It comes out of your sick bank and you're not expected to make it up or anything like that....it's just a deduction from your sick bank as if you took it yourself.

Cindy

[Tami]

I work for a large university. We are allowed to donate days to people that need them thoughout our own college. There are several colleges (education, health and human development, business etc) with hundreds of employees in each college.

In order for a person to be eligible to receive donated time they first must have used all their own sick time, vacation etc. Then it must be a serious illness (as deemed by the colleges Human resourses person) pregnancy etc. doesn't count. If the person qualifies a notice is sent to all employees with information about the employee just basic information about the illness etc. Asking people to donate. An individual may ONLY donate one VACATION DAY per month. The vacation day is taken from your bank of earned days. that's it you are not required to also make up the day. You just have one less vacation day to use.

That company sounds very unethical... that's like the company getting 2 days?? Sounds like they are exploting the ill person and taking advantage of their other employees. What a horrible system. If I were the person asking for donated days I would feel doubly guilty...