Travis County Commissioners Court

June 26, 2012 - Item 11
Agenda

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11 is consider and take appropriate action on the following policy revisions, A, 10.036 Vacation Leave; and B, 10.037, Sick Leave.
If we approve this, know in that the change is coming in January.

>> The change would come in January.
We would have plenty of time to make sure the employees are aware of the substantive proposes.
Diane and leslie brouder to my left.
These changes are to get ready for the befit.
We need to do standardize some procedures.
We don't really have in policy and we needed to go ahead and adopt some current practices into the policy.
So we did rewrite the policies to incorporate these changes.
The first change that employees will see is that instead of the policy reading that sick leave will be accrued at every eight hours per month, it will be four hours per pay period.
That is the current practice that we are using in h.t.e.
So that is simply updating the policy to the current practice.
Second practice for updating is -- that is not incorporated in the policy is what happens with law enforcement officers who have no maximum transfer to a nonlaw enforcement position.
Currently the practice is that the law officer or the former officer will be able to keep his or her vacation balance; however, they will not accrue any more balance until the usage goes below 240 because the nonlaw enforcement positions are not allowed to have more than 240 hours.
They will accrue no more balances until they are below 240.
Of course, they will continue to accrue the sick time.
Lastly the policy says that employees may use vacation and sick as those accruals are accrued in their banks.
What's not addressed there is when those accruals hit.
Because an employee has to work part of a pay period to qualify, it's imperative we have the time entered by management prior to putting accruals in.
That accrual can be used in the following pay period, not for the pay period which it was accrued.
What's happening is there is a lot of manual paperwork with while people verify yes they worked in this pay period.
Let's just make it simple and standardize the practice where if you accrue it in the pay period you can use it in the next.
We are asking this go into effect January 1, 2013, so everybody is aware of the changes there, and in addition for anybody who might be low on balances come January 1st they will have three personal days put into their personal holiday bank so that should ease the transition if they were used to using that four hours or six hours.
So just to make it a little easier on employees to make that transition.

>> On those personal holidays, just grant them up front.

>> That's correct.

>> There's no obligation you stay the rest of the year.

>> You may use them as soon as you get them and we don't do anything to take them out of your bank if you've used them.

>> So on the accrual of leave, we will help supervisors understand the policy so they can inform their employees between now and the first of the "-of January.

>> Correct.
A lot of people are already aware of this practice but there are a few departments and offices that allow them to use the pay period during the pay period for which it was accrued.
We want to make sure and reach out and make sure everybody knows what's going to happen January 1st.

>> I didn't know the extent to which we do allow employees to go ahead and use it when they earn it.

>> I don't know if befit is here.
They ran a report over the last two years to see how many departments and how many people.
It was less than 2% of the employees that are using the current accrual.
So it's not a huge impact, but we want to make sure all of our employees are aware of the change.

>> It would be impactful on the 2%.
The 98 it doesn't matter one way or the other.
I'm happy to say I'm part of the 98%, along with my majority.
Questions, comments?
Move approval of the recommendations.

>> Second.

>> Discussion on the motion?
And that's for a and b.

>> A and b.

>> All in favor?
That passes by unanimous vote.
Thank you all very much.

>> Thank you.

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