Sick leave is an important fringe benefit available to employees. Most employees earn and, depending on usage, will accumulate hours of unused sick leave while they are employed. If eligible, upon retirement, layoff, death or with more than 20 years of adjusted continuous service, you can use your unused sick leave credits to pay post-termination state group health insurance premiums for you, your spouse or domestic partner and/or dependents.
Sick leave can be used for the following reasons:
- A medical, dental, vision appointment for you or an immediate family member
- Employee’s own illness or injury
- For temporary care of an immediate family member with an illness or injury
- After the death of a family member (restricted to three days after death and an additional four days for travel)
To review the complete sick leave policy, please see: https://www.wisconsin.edu/ohrwd/download/policies/ops/bn3.pdf
Employees have the right to use other accrued leave (personal holiday, floating legal holiday or vacation) in lieu of sick leave in order to preserve sick leave balances.
Sick Leave Credits Program
ETF Fact Sheet: http://etf.wi.gov/publications/et8929.pdf
ETF Sick Leave Conversion Credit Program Brochure: http://etf.wi.gov/publications/et4132.pdf
There are two sick leave credit programs for State of Wisconsin employees:
- Accumulated Sick Leave Conversion Credit (ASLCC) Program: allows employees to convert sick leave balances to pay for state health insurance at retirement, as well as in other situations such as death, layoff or termination with 20 years of service. Under this program, accumulated sick leave is multiplied by the employee’s highest basic pay rate in a qualifying position and converted to credits to pay for State Group Health Insurance in retirement (or in the other instances listed above).
- Supplemental Health Insurance Conversion Credit (SHICC) Program: allows employees who have at least 15 years of continuous state service to earn sick leave credits in addition to those provided by the ASLCC program. Eligible employees earn up to 52 supplemental credits/year for years 1-24 of service and up to 104 supplemental credits/year for years 25 and beyond. The number of supplemental credits provided may not exceed the actual number of sick leave credit hours an employee has accumulated.
Sick Leave Credits Example
A state employee retires with 28 full years of adjusted continuous service, with a sick leave balance of 2,150 hours and had a highest base rate of pay of $22.50/hour.
ASLCC (2,150 x $22.50) = $48,375
SHICC (24 years x 52 hours) = 1,248 hours
(4 years x 104 hours) = 416 hours
1,664 SHICC hours
SHICC (1,664 x $22.50) = $37,440
Total ($48,375 + $37,440) = $85,815
Please contact Human Resources at (920) 465-2390 or payrollandbenefits@uwgb.edu with any questions regarding sick leave benefits. The Sick Leave Fact Sheet may also be found here.