Certified Sick Leave (more than 20 days per cycle)

Certified Sick Leave entries can be made in ESS up to 3 years in advance, and 3 years retroactively.

Requests for Certified Sick Leave over 20 cumulative or consecutive days in a leave cycle DO NOT require attachment of the medical report for privacy reasons. The report, including diagnosis of the staff member’s condition, must be emailed to Medical Services.

The process for successfully processing and approving a Certified Sick Leave request that is longer than 20 days in a leave cycle (April to March) includes these procedures and roles:

• If Medical Services certifies only some days, the system sends out an email notification to the staff member, Time Manager and HR Partner. The status of the days that were approved is updated in ESS and these days are deducted from the Sick Leave with Full Pay quota, and automatically recorded in ECC. The staff member must submit either an updated Certified Sick Leave request in ESS or another type of leave request for the rejected days. The staff member will have 60 days form the initial automatically generated email informing them that their Certified Sick Leave has been partly approved. The email will contain information the approved and the rejected days. They will have 60 days to address the issue highlighted with their rejected Certified Sick Leave request, if they do not act the rejected Certified Sick Leave will be recorded and Unauthorized Absence on the 60th day.
• If Medical Services fully rejects the Sick Leave period, the system automatically notifies the staff member, Time Administrator and HR Partner. The HR Office follows up with the staff member concerning their absence for the period of leave that has not been certified by Medical Services. The staff member will have 60 days from the initial automatically generated email informing them their Certified Sick Leave days have been fully rejected, and they are required to take action. If they do not take action on day 60 the rejected Certified Sick Leave will be recorded as an Unauthorized Absence.

Exceptional Record Entries in ECC
Exceptionally, when neither the Staff Member nor the Time Administrator/Time Senior Administrator have access to ESS, the HR Partner or Time Senior Administrator can view, create, or modify attendance records including certified sick leave and uncertified sick leave, directly in ECC.

In cases of extended sick leave and when a staff member has reached a certain sick leave threshold, the system sends an email notification to the Staff Member and the HR Partner informing them of the remaining sick leave with full pay entitlement so they can see they are close to exhausting it.

Sick Leave with Full Pay Notification Thresholds

• For staff members entitled to 195 days of sick leave with full pay, the notification is sent when the balance reaches 45 days.
• For staff members entitled to 65 days of sick leave with full pay, the notification is sent when the balance reaches 30 days.
  

After receiving this notification, the HR Partner should advise the staff member of the options available for dealing with the absence once the entitlement is exhausted. The HR Partner should obtain in writing the staff member’s agreement to use half sick leave with half annual leave or sick leave with half pay and should start considering whether the case should be submitted to the Medical Services Division to ascertain whether it warrants consideration for disability.

It should be noted that the staff member will not be able to submit requests for sick leave on half pay through ESS once the 195 or 65 days on sick leave on full pay have been exhausted. At that point, any requests for sick leave must be handled offline and will involve the HR Partner, Time Senior Administrator, and Medical services. The HR Partner will then make the necessary arrangements in ECC to record the leave options chosen while on sick leave on half pay.

Staff Members are entitled to the same number of days of sick leave with half pay equivalent in number to the days of sick leave with full pay, i.e., 195 or 65.

Sick leave with half pay combined with half duty requires approval by Medical Service.

Once the sick leave with half pay quota is exhausted, if the Medical Director recommends that the staff member should be considered for a disability benefit, the staff member may be placed on Special Leave With Half Pay (SLWHP) upon approval of the Office of Human Resources Management.

A staff member who returns to work after all leave entitlements have been exhausted will be placed on Special Leave Without Pay (SLWOP) for any subsequent absences until annual leave accruals are available.

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