Announcing Open Enrollment for State-sponsored Benefits and the Sick Leave Pool

Larry T. Ellis, Director, Division of Human Resources

State-sponsored benefits open enrollment
The annual open enrollment period for employee benefits, which will run from September 29 to October 24, provides University of Florida employees with the opportunity to reassess their benefits and make changes to their various state-sponsored insurance policies. Now is the time for employees to carefully review health, life, and supplemental insurance as well as flexible benefits needs.

Employees should note that, as a result of legislation passed earlier this year, the University of Florida and its employees will see a 16 percent increase in health insurance premiums effective December 1, 2003. An increase in co-pays and deductibles will go into effect on January 1, 2004. Employees’ share of health insurance premiums will increase from $41.96 to $48.67 per month for individual coverage and from $150.98 to $175.14 per month for family coverage.

Employees may download a guide to open enrollment at <www.hr.ufl.edu/benefits/oeguide.pdf>, which includes ways to access, enroll in, or make changes to benefits; highlights of changes to health and supplemental insurance for 2004; and a list of the mailings employees should receive. For more details about the open enrollment process, please visit <www.hr.ufl.edu/benefits> or contact University Benefits at 392-1225 (SC 622-1225) or benefits@ufl.edu.

Sick Leave Pool open enrollment
Open enrollment for the Sick Leave Pool will be held throughout October. Academic Personnel, TEAMS, and USPS employees are eligible to enroll if they have completed one year of employment with UF and have at least 64 hours of accrued sick leave on balance (hours are prorated for part-time employees).

Enrollment is handled through a simple application process. If an application is approved, a one-time 8-hour contribution will be deducted automatically from the employee’s sick leave account. The contribution is made only once unless the total available hours in the pool drops to an unacceptable level.

By enrolling in the Sick Leave Pool, employees combine a portion of their individually accrued sick leave for collective use. As a member of the sick leave pool, an employee may draw upon the pool—with approval from the Sick Leave Pool Committee—in instances in which he or she has used all sick, annual, and compensatory (if applicable) leave because of personal, not family, catastrophic injury or illness.

Applications may be downloaded from the Sick Leave Pool section of the Division of Human Resources web site at <www.hr.ufl.edu/benefits/forms/sickleavepool_app.pdf> and must be received by 5 p.m. on October 31.

Employees also may visit <www.hr.ufl.edu/benefits/slp.htm> for more information or contact their Sick Leave Pool administrator:

TEAMS and USPS employees		Academic Personnel
John Sun, Administrator			Janet Malphurs, Administrator
392-5732 (SC 622-5732)			392-1251
central-leave@ufl.edu			jmmalph@ufl.edu