Several employees have asked whether they may donate their unused PTO to a coworker with a serious medical condition.  Has anyone tried this?  If so, would you be willing to share your policy?

This should help: An Employer’s Guide to Employee Leave-Sharing Programs.

Wendy,

We have allowed this to be done, but we do not have a formal policy.  We allow it on a one by one basis and very seldom. I have been here 26 years and I have seen it done 3 times. All 3 times were for extreme illness.

When we allowed it the hours were simply deducted from the person donating the hours and added to the person using the hours. When they were paid out they were paid out to the person as PTO on her payroll check at her wages.

I am not sure if this is correct, however, it is how it was done in the past. Since it has only been 3 times in 26 years I have not written up a formal policy.

Shirley

I found some items of interest on Google.  It seems that the concept alluded to in this thread is also referred to as a Compassionate Leave Policy.

Apparently, the Compassionate Leave Policies, are fairly common in institutions of higher education.

http://www.maricopa.edu/hrweb/benefits/compassionate_lve_.htm

A sample policy from the University of New Hampshire is linked below:

http://www.unh.edu/hr/pdfs/compassionate-leave-procedure.pdf

I would be happy to share our company policy.  Please feel free to e-mail me directly at:  .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Some considerations to ponder on:

Cost
EE A is out for 2 weeks and the cost of the payroll is $1000 a week (total $2000)
EE B donates 2 weeks and the cost of the payroll is $500 a week (total $1000)
That is an extra $1000 of payroll the company just incurred.

Obligation
Subordinates may feel obligated to donate

Also, check your states Department of Labor.  They may have an opinion too.

You may want to consider STD and LTD for future instances.

We don’t have a policy on this but we also do this on a case-by-case basis. It is only used for long term serious illness or a catastrophic event which prevents the employee from working. This is done with the documentation process and it has a final approval by HR if it qualifies for PTO donation. Once approved, the employee who wants to donate will be provided a document statement and how much they want to contribute. The PTO hours are deducted and added to the employee who formally requested one.

Several years ago (approximately 8 years) we allowed this practice, particularly for an employee who had a serious illness which continued for about 1 year.  Other employees were allowed to donate some of their sick leave to this employees leave bank (although we did not have current policy set to allow this practice).  A couple of years later one employee who had donated about 10 hours of his/her time and abused his/her leave constantly by not allowing it to accumulate (this person used the leave as quickly as he/she accrued it) needed to be out for a week and had no leave accrued.  He/she asked if he/she could have 40 hours of leave donated to him/her and was denied.  The employee threatened to sue.  Our management immediately placed a stop to all leave donations until such time as a policy would be prepared and enforced.  Management has chosen not to pursue this topic.

The Postal Service has an Annual Leave Sharing program, allowing employees to donate up to 1/2 the annual leave they earn in a year to an employee who is medically incapacitated from working and has exhausted all of their paid leave + 40 hours unpaid leave.  Requests for donations are sent to surrounding facilities, sometimes resulting in donations from total strangers.  The program works very well.  I couldn’t get it to attach to my reply, but if you email me—at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)—I will send you a copy.