Shared Leave Pool

The Shared Leave Pool Program has been established to provide additional leave to College employees who have exhausted all of their accrued leave time and are experiencing a personal illness or injury which is life threatening, catastrophic, or resulting in a permanent disability. This program also applies to employees caring for dependents who are experiencing a personal illness or injury which is life threatening, catastrophic, or resulting in a permanent disability.

The program is based on a “pool” concept rather than donations to a specific employee. The “pool” is defined as a single College-wide pool that receives voluntary contributions of vacation, sick, and personal hours from employees and makes the hours available to eligible employees. Employees may donate to the pool by submitting an email to Human Resources. Donations to the pool are subject to the following conditions:

• Hours must be contributed in one-hour increments.
• Employees may make one-time donations or may designate a contribution amount to be donated to the pool each month.
• Contributions may not be designated for a specific College employee.
• Contributions made will not subsequently be returned to the donating employee unless the employee becomes eligible as a recipient.

Any benefit-eligible College employee is considered eligible to receive Shared Leave providing the following conditions are met:

• The employee, or a qualified dependent, must be experiencing a personal illness or injury which is life threatening, catastrophic, or resulting in a potentially permanent disability. The illness or injury does not have to be job related. A qualified dependent is defined as any person for whom the employee is the primary care provider.
• The employee must have exhausted all accrued leave time (sick leave, vacation leave, personal leave, and compensatory time) before being eligible to withdraw from the pool.

The employee requesting Shared Leave hours is not required to have previously contributed to the pool before withdrawing pool leave. Eligible absences due to the illness or injury may be either continuous and extended or recurring and episodic. The maximum amount of time for which an employee may receive leave is 126 working days (six average working months) in any 36-month period.

Procedure for Shared Leave Pool Request

Employees request the use of shared leave by sending an email request to the Human Resources email distribution list. This email will include the reason for the request and the dates requested for the use of shared leave or appropriate length of leave needed.

Human Resources reviews the request for shared leave and gathers or requests additional information as necessary to complete the information needed to process the request.  Upon completion of the packet, the Human Resources department forwards the request to the Faculty and Staff Senates for review and recommendation.  Upon completion of the Faculty and Staff Senate’s reviews, the packet is returned to Human Resources with a recommendation for approval or disapproval.

Upon receipt of the Faculty and Staff Senate’s recommendations, Human Resources consider the entirety of the packet and recommendations of the Senates and renders the final decision.  Once the final decision is made, the employee is provided the information on the decision of request.

LINE OF AUTHORITY

Responsible administrator or office: Human Resources

Contact person in that office: Amy Ames

EFFECTIVE DATE: August 16, 2023

Approved by President: August 16, 2023