A Colorado state classified employee must work for a full month to accrue 6.66 hours of sick leave. Often, employees burn through their sick leave quickly and must tap into their annual leave to cover sick time. Then, if a catastrophe happens, what little annual leave they may have accumulated is gone and they have no choice but to take unpaid time off.
As we are all so very aware right now, no one can predict when a life-altering event will occur. But when it does, state classified employees at Colorado State University are very fortunate to have a resource such as the State Classified Leave Sharing Program.
What is the Leave Sharing Program?
The program, also known as the leave bank, is made possible through a combination of state statute, University policy and the support of the Classified Personnel Council. The leave bank provides income protection to eligible state classified employees with a year of service who need to be absent from work but have inadequate paid time off accumulated for qualifying reasons. State classified employees who apply for program benefits must meet criteria for the hours they are requesting based upon eligibility requirements (http://hrs.colostate.edu/benefits/timeoff-leave-bank.html):
- Serious medical hardship or catastrophic illness or injury
- Eligible immediate family member’s incapacity
- A catastrophic event or emergency affecting the person’s residence
- An employee serving as a first responder
- An employee on active military service with an initial call to duty financial hardship
The State Classified Leave Sharing Program is in urgent need of donated hours. The bank is currently depleted of hours and immediate donations are critical to sustain the program!
Donate any time
In an average year, approximately 20 state classified colleagues need assistance from the program. The leave bank needs approximately 2,620 donated hours to approve the applications throughout an average year. The state classified workforce at CSU consists of approximately 1,700 employees. If each employee donated the program’s minimum of four hours of annual leave, the leave bank would grow large enough to cover approved applications for over two years.
State classified employees may donate annual leave to the program at any time during the year. The donation form can be found on the Human Resources website at (http://hrs.colostate.edu/benefits/timeoff-leave-bank.html). Your department HR Liaison can also help guide you through the donation and application process.
During this uncertain time, we understand that it may be hard to know how much annual leave you may need to use. We encourage those employees with plenty to share to consider at least donating 4 four hours (the program minimum donation). And please, watch your balances at year-end and donate any excess annual leave that you might otherwise forfeit. You can make a difference!
This program is available to state classified employees only.
