Holiday Season Advanced Annual Leave

David Colburn, Provost, Academic Affairs; Larry T. Ellis, Director, Division of Human Resources

In preparation for the holiday season and leave requests, we are happy to provide you with this year’s policy on advanced annual leave.

Annual leave may be advanced to and used by Academic Personnel, TEAMS, and USPS employees who do not have sufficient amounts of leave to cover normal working hours for the period of December 15, 2003, to January 2, 2004.

To keep accurate records of all advanced annual leave credits, leave administrators should enter leave slips in a timely manner, allowing employees’ annual leave balances to become negative. Please note that this is an exception to normal policy. Other than during this period, leave balances should not be allowed to become negative.

All annual leave earned by affected employees will count toward recovering the full amount of advanced leave. No additional annual leave may be approved for employees until positive leave balances have been reached. If an employee terminates before achieving a positive leave balance, it is the department’s responsibility to recover money due in conjunction with a negative annual leave balance. Since many USPS employees earn only four hours of annual leave each pay period, discretion should be used with regard to the amount of annual leave advanced. For example, advancing one week of annual leave (40 hours for a full-time employee) to an employee who earns four hours per pay period will require the employee to work ten additional pay periods, or five months, before he or she is able to take paid time off for personal reasons.

A form to report approvals of advanced leave is available from the Division of Human Resources’ web site <www.hr.ufl.edu/benefits/forms/advleave.pdf>. Departments who are unable to download the form from the web should contact Central Leave Administration at 392-5732 (SC 622-5732) to obtain a copy. The department’s leave administrator should maintain completed forms.

TEAMS and USPS employees should contact John Sun of Central Leave Administration at 392-5732 (SC 622-5732) or central-leave@ufl.edu, and Academic Personnel should contact Janet Malphurs of Academic Personnel at 392-1251 or jmmalph@ufl.edu with questions.