For the last 15 months, Bayfield employees have had the option to ensure their accumulated sick time hours – also called their “sick bank” – can be used in other ways.
They can convert those sick hours to either paid time off or a monetary payout.
Some decided to go that route, and they like the extra flexibility it creates in creating a greater work-life balance.
“If you have a healthy organization or a healthy group as a whole, people are able to use that same time off for either vacation, family time or whatever. It doesn’t necessarily have to be tied to an illness,” Public Works Director Jeremy Schulz said, adding that the time off aspect in turn promotes job satisfaction. “We have a younger group of employees here, which all have families and kids. … They’re able to use those (extra paid time-off hours) for athletic events.”
Schulz said the change has proven to be helpful for a couple employees whose children are in gymnastics and travel to their events.
“(Those employees have) been able to use that time off for, say, Friday to Monday versus having a limited portion of vacation where you’re basically just taking a summer vacation with your family. We’ve seen that, and I think that’s a benefit within my department,” he said.
And because town employees already have wellness benefits, he also said people are ending up with extra vacation hours to use.
In the event an employer and employee part ways, the current setup entails paid time off hours would be paid out, but sick hours would not be. The change now means sick hours can be added to that payout.
Of all public works employees, Schulz said about half converted their sick hours to paid time off while the other half decided to apply them toward their health savings account. He also said the accrual rate for paid time off is higher.
Before the switch, for example, public works employees who had been working there less than five years could accrue about 3.69 hours of sick hours and 3.69 vacation hours per pay period. Now, they’re able to accrue up to eight hours of paid time off per pay period, according to Schulz.
“It’s been received very well by staff,” he said.
Public works employee Michael Wisner said the conversion has worked out better for him because he found he needed those extra time-off hours more so than sick hours.
He said the setup allows him to use those extra hours to spend some extra time with his children, ages 3 and 5. For example, he used time off to go on a family trip to Arizona earlier this month and also a few hours on April 18 to go to his children’s art class.
“With the old system, you had less time to use throughout the year because half of it was sick time. So if you weren’t sick, it wasn’t really usable,” Wisner said.
Parks and trails director Mark Robinson said the change means employees don’t have to specify on their time sheet whether they took a vacation or may have actually fallen ill. However, employees are still responsible for managing their time-off hours accordingly and communicating with management about said time off.
“I think we just have more freedom of choosing what we’re doing with that leave,” Robinson said, adding the only time his department struggled with managing those different hours came during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wisner said he usually tries to conserve five days’ worth of sick hours, if that, for emergency situations, but virtually all of his paid time off goes toward things like family trips.
Regardless, the new system means those hours won’t go unused.
mhollinshead@durangoherald.com