UW-Madison extended its carried-over vacation day deadline this week to October 9, 2021, for Faculty, Academic Staff and Limited Appointees who have 12-month appointments.
Employees — including Faculty, Academic Staff and Limited Appointments — who have leftover personal holiday hours originally only could use them until June 30, according to the university’s COVID-19 Pandemic Leave Policy, but employee concerns regarding proximity of the June 30 deadline made UW Administrators reconsider the date.
University policies for personal and legal holidays, as well as policies for paid vacation, will proceed as written by the UW-Madison Office of Human Resources.
“Many employees have been deferring time off during the pandemic because they could not travel, spend time with family and friends or get away from managing pandemic-related issues,” Senior University Relations Specialist Marilyn Gardner said in a statement Thursday.
The carry-over aims to grant employees their built-up time off and also disperse times during which employees can use their days off. Many employee absences between now and the June deadline could have been detrimental to unit objectives across the university.
“The campus wants to ensure employees have sufficient time to use their vacation hours and will not end up losing this earned time,” Gardner said.
The university chose October 9 as the updated carryover deadline because it occurs when a biweekly pay period is over. As previously announced by the university, all employees currently being paid monthly will be moving to a biweekly pay schedule starting in July. Students employed by the university are already using this pay schedule.
University Staff will have until Dec. 31, 2021, to use both personal holiday hours and vacation carryover balance. Employees with still-existing benefits carried over from the 2019 calendar year will be able to keep them until April 30, 2021, according to the COVID-19 Pandemic Leave Policy. If the 2019 time credits are not used by April 30, they will be converted to cash payments. There will be no further extensions by the university to use earned leave days.
