2124 - Employee Leave Management

Category

Leave

Audience List

• Agency Secretaries
• Agency Undersecretaries
• Department Deputy Directors
• Department Directors
• Employee Relations Officers
• Personnel Officers
• Personnel Transactions Supervisors

Synopsis

This policy

• Explains the requirement for all departments to have an employee leave management plan.
• Identifies the actions appointing authorities, state managers, and supervisors should take to ensure leave is being tracked and audited for accuracy.
• Explains the employee leave management activities that the California Department of Human Resources (CalHR) is expected to perform.
• Reminds departments that some MOUs require employees use Personal Leave Program (PLP) 2010, PLP 2012, PLP 2020, PLP 2025 and furlough hours before vacation or annual leave.
   

Introduction

The state established vacation and annual leave benefits with the intent to rejuvenate the workforce ensuring employees maintain the capacity to optimally perform their jobs. It is the appointing power's responsibility to provide reasonable opportunity for all employees to take an annual vacation commensurate with their annual accrual rate of vacation or annual leave.

Research shows that taking periodic vacations is beneficial to employee health and well-being, allows reconnection with their families, and restores balance between their work and private lives. To both comply with existing civil service rules and adhere to contemporary human resources principles, state managers and supervisors should cultivate healthy work-life balance by granting reasonable employee vacation or annual leave requests when operationally feasible.

California state employees have accumulated significant leave hours over the years, creating an unfunded liability for departmental budgets. The value of this liability increases for each employee with each salary increase. Accordingly, leave balances exceeding established limits need to be consistently addressed.

A result of excess leave accumulation occurs when employees separate from state service and departments are obligated to cash out accrued leave credits at the employee’s current salary rates, which in most cases is higher than when the leave credits were earned. These payouts amount to millions of dollars each year and represent an unfunded liability that must be paid from current-year funds. This puts strain on departmental budgets as they must keep vital positions vacant, redirect from other funding sources, and/or request additional funds.

Statement

Leave Balance Management Plan

To reduce leave balances that exceed caps, the state has many strategies departments can employ such as:

• When authorized, provide the option for leave cash-out for represented employees and excluded employees (see Policy Statement 2104).
• Require employees use PLP 2010, 2012, 2020, 2025 (where applicable), and furlough hours before vacation or annual leave (see Policy Statement 2113).
• Pay overtime in cash and avoid compensating time off (CTO) when operationally feasible.
• Cash out CTO for employees transferring to a new appointing authority as required. Excess hours are a form of compensation for additional time worked on an Alternate Work Week Schedule, and therefore, will also be cashed out upon transfer.
• Have a written leave plan for each employee over their cap as required.
• Use leave plan templates to manage employee expectations and leave balances.

Plan Goals

By emphasizing the importance of employee leave and policies within departments the following goals will be met:

1. Shift organizational culture by emphasizing and promoting a work-life balance philosophy that improves employee health and job performance through the use of leave hours.
2. Implement a leave management and monitoring process by auditing departmental leave balances.
3. Reduce future unfunded leave liability by enforcing CTO and leave policies.
4. Hold supervisors accountable for monitoring leave balances and enforcing adherence to leave reduction plans of their direct reports.
5. Reduce the number of hours over the maximum by 15-20 percent each year.
6. Eliminate all furlough and PLP hours still on the books.

Employee Leave Management Oversight

Responsible oversight of employee benefit programs requires monitoring, reporting, training and enforcement activities. 
The following is a list of employee leave management activities that departments should perform:

• Enforce employee leave program laws, rules and policies.
• Develop and communicate employee leave program policy, procedures, and practices to departments.
• Provide leave management consultation to departments.
• Develop guidance and tools to help departments manage employee leave balances.
• Develop metrics to measure progress of excess leave balance reduction and the status of leave balance hours and cash value.
• Monitor leave balance systems and compliance efforts.
• Track, calculate and publish statewide leave balance hours and cash value.

Application

Employee Leave Management Policy

It is the policy of the state to foster and maintain a workforce that has the capacity to effectively produce quality services expected by both internal customers and the citizens of California. Therefore, appointing authorities and state managers and supervisors should:

1. Manage and schedule workload in a manner that accommodates employee leave requests to reinvigorate employees without compromising organizational performance.
2. Comply with existing leave statutes, regulations, MOUs, and policies pertaining to annual leave, vacation leave, CTO, PLP, and voluntary PLP.
3. Create monthly internal audit processes to verify if leave is being keyed accurately and timely (see Policy Statement 2101).
4. Create leave reduction procedures in alignment with existing leave statutes, regulations and MOUs for the organization to monitor employees’ leave to ensure compliance with maximum balance amounts.
5. Ensure employees who have significantly exceeded the leave cap have a leave reduction plan in place and are actively reducing hours.

Vacation/Annual Leave Caps 

Employees are authorized to carry a maximum amount of vacation or annual leave hours from year to year. For more information about leave maximums, please refer to the Human Resources Manual Policy Statements 2102 and 2103.
As a result of PLP 2025 some MOUs provide temporary leave cap increases that extend to the related excluded employees. However, departments should still move forward with leave-reduction plan implementation as needed.
 

Authorities

• Bargaining Contracts - MOUs
• California Code of Regulations, title 2, section 599.707
• California Code of Regulations, title 2, section 599.742
• California Code of Regulations, title 2, section 599.742.1

Resources

Related Policies

• 2101: Leave Accounting
• 2102: Annual Leave
• 2103: Vacation
• 2104: Leave Buy-Back
• 2113: Personal Leave Program (PLP)

Web Pages

• Leave Reduction Plan Resources: Leave Reduction Plan Resources

Authorized By

Melissa Russell
Chief
Personnel Management Division

Contact Person

Personnel Services Branch
Personnel Program Consultant , Personnel Services Branch
Phone: 916-909-3702
Fax: 916-327-1886
Email: psb@calhr.ca.gov

Superseded Policies

History

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