Healthy Families and Workplaces Act (2020)

Sick leave can be used for the following reasons: 

• An employee has a mental or physical illness, injury, or health condition; needs a medical diagnosis, care, or treatment related to such illness, injury or condition; or needs to obtain preventive medical care.
• An employee needs to care for a family member who has a mental or physical illness, injury or health condition; needs a medical diagnosis, care or treatment related to such illness, injury or condition; or needs to obtain preventive medical care;
• An employee or family member has been the victim of domestic abuse, sexual assault, or harassment and needs to be absent from work for purposes related to such crime; or
• A public official has ordered the closure of the school or place of care of the employee's child or of the employee's place of business due to a public health emergency, necessitating the employee's absence from work.

See CU's Sick Leave policy for additional details.

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A) When determining your accrual, please keep the following in mind:

• CU has several leave eligibilities, so your accrual will depend on your position type
• Employees in multiple positions might have multiple eligibilities. In that case you would apply the eligibility rules separately to each position
• Your accrual in any position will be affected by your schedule. If you are part-time in a position, your accrual may be a proration of the full benefit

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A) This depends on your pay frequancy or status as a contract employee:

Monthly Pay:

Employees in pay groups paid monthly can use the sick earnings codes that are already available. There are no new codes or processes to record this time.

Biweekly Pay:

Employees paid in a biweekly pay group will have a new Earnings Code – Hourly Sick Leave – that will pay the employee for absence time covered by the state sick leave plan as long as they have an available balance to use. Employees do not need to enter a second code to be paid. Entering HSK – Hourly Sick Leave alone will pay the employee for the hours of leave used.

Contract:

Contract employees cannot enter sick leave usage for themselves at this time. Work with your campus HR representative to record the usage of your sick leave.

A) Employees can use sick leave in increments of 15 minutes (0.25 hours). 

Employees eligible for state sick leave and earning 0.034 accrual hours per hour worked can only use up to 48 hours each plan year, regardless of how many hours they accrue. A plan year matches the fiscal year of July 1 – June 30 of the following year.

State sick leave eligible employees may also carry up to 48 hours of unused leave into the next plan year. The evaluation of an employee’s carryover occurs during the Leave Sweep process at the end of each fiscal year, at the same time we run the Leave Sweep process for our existing leave plans. Any balance that exceeds 48 hours will be removed at that time for the state sick leave plan enrollees.

• University Staff, Classified Staff, and 12-Month faculty plans already have rules outlined for maximum balances and sweeping leave. They can be found here:
  • University Staff and 12-Month Faculty
  • Classified Staff

9-Month faculty do not have a limit on their total leave balance. However, these employees cannot earn more than 11 days (88 hours) of leave in any calendar year.

A) This depends on your specific situation. If all your positions are eligible for the same leave benefits – meaning all eligible for the state sick benefit, all eligible for the Classified leave benefit, or all eligible for the University Staff leave benefit – then your sick balance will be shared across those positions.

If you have positions with differing eligibility – such as a position eligible for Classified sick leave and a position eligible for the state sick leave – then those balances would not be shared with the positions enrolled in a different leave plan.

Please note: Employee positions paid through a contract currently do not accrue any leave within the HCM system and will not record or have access to that leave within My Leave. See your campus Human Resources department for details on usage of this leave.

A) Contract employees are eligible for the new paid sick leave. Campus Human Resources departments are creating processes to track leave usage outside of My Leave. If you are a contract employee, more information will be provided to you about leave accrual and usage at the beginning of the spring semester.

A) If you leave employment with CU, generally you lose all remaining sick leave balances and do not receive a payout of any unused sick leave. There are exceptions for certain employees retiring, and Classified employees have rules governed by state law that allows balances to transfer to other state positions.

However, any employee that terminates their employee relationship with CU but returns within six (6) months is entitled to full reinstatement of any sick leave balance that remained at the time of termination.

Sick leave balances should be transferred between departments or campuses if an employee is maintaining at least one active employee position with CU.

A) Employees paid on a stipend are not eligible for sick leave because they do not have a bona fide employee relationship.