Holiday Season Advanced Vacation Leave

David Colburn, Senior Vice President, Academic Affairs and 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 vacation leave.

Vacation leave may be advanced to and used by Academic Personnel (who accrue vacation leave), TEAMS, and USPS employees who do not have sufficient amounts of leave to cover normal working hours for the period of December 13, 2004, to January 3, 2005.

As usual, all vacation leave usage must be reported through Weekly Elapsed Time in a timely manner allowing employee’s vacation 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 vacation leave earned by affected employees will count toward recovering the full amount of advanced leave. No additional vacation 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 vacation leave balance. Since many USPS employees earn only four hours of vacation leave each pay period, discretion should be used with regard to the amount of vacation leave advanced. For example, advancing one week of vacation 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.

Departments, however, are obligated to advance vacation leave to cover time during the university closing, 12/27/04 – 12/30/04, if requested by a USPS employee.

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.