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Donation of Leave Guidelines

Purpose

The Donation of Leave Guidelines were developed to allow employees to voluntarily donate accumulated annual leave, paid leave, banked overtime, and/or banked statutory holiday time to other employees. Leave can be donated in circumstances where an employee has exhausted all appropriate leave and faces a significant challenge or emergency (e.g. cancer treatments or the life threatening illness of a member of the employee’s immediate family) requiring the employee to be absent from work.

Application

These guidelines apply to all employees. Bargaining unit employees should consult their collective agreement.

Definitions

Employee’s immediate family the employee’s immediate family may include the following: mother, father, legal guardian, brother, sister, child, spouse, grandmother, grandfather, grandchild, mother-in-law, father-in-law, and near relative living in the same family household.

Responsibility

Departments

It is the responsibility of departments, in consultation with their Strategic Human Resource Management Units, to administer the guidelines for donated leave. Individual departments should:

• Promptly forward the donation of leave request to the Public Service Secretariat for a decision;
• Ensure employees who are donating leave have the accumulated leave available to do so;
• Ensure that the donation of leave is voluntary and that employees are not pressured to donate leave;
• Ensure that leave donation arrangements do not unduly interfere with departmental operations; and
• Ensure the confidentiality of the leave donation bank. Neither the recipient of donations, nor other employees, should access information on the identity of individual donors or the amount of their donations.

Public Service Secretariat

It is the responsibility of the Public Service Secretariat to promptly decide whether to approve the request based on the conditions outlined in the guidelines.

Employee

It is the responsibility of employees to:

• Review the Guidelines for Donation of Leave and understand the implications of participation;
• Notify the Strategic Human Resource Management Unit and the Deputy Minister of the need for a leave donation arrangement so that an appropriate review and request for approval can be done in a timely manner; and
• Ensure appropriate leave balances are available for donation of annual leave, paid leave, banked overtime, or banked statutory holiday time.

Process for Approval

A leave donation arrangement may be requested in one of two ways:

• Employees hoping to avail of a leave donation arrangement may make a request in writing to their Deputy Minister; or
• One or more co-workers of an employee may initiate a written proposal, with the consent of the employee, to the Deputy Minister for a leave donation arrangement.

Employees can donate annual leave, paid leave, banked overtime, and/or banked statutory holiday time. They cannot donate sick leave, family responsibility leave or bereavement leave entitlements. Donation of leave requests shall be submitted by the respective Deputy Minister to the Deputy Minister of the Public Service Secretariat for approval. In order to ensure efficient and effective decision making, donation of leave requests should provide sufficient information to outline the specific circumstances requiring the employee to be absent from work. The department must also confirm the employee’s leave status.

Employees of any department may donate and/or receive donated leave. The employee donating leave does not have to be from the same department as the employee receiving donated leave.

The conditions of donation of leave arrangements approved by Treasury Board include the following:

• Leave donated will be valued based on the donating employees’ daily salary, and employees taking the leave will draw upon this bank based on their daily salary;
• Only accumulated annual leave, paid leave, banked overtime, and/or banked statutory holiday time may be donated;
• The maximum number of hours that may be donated to the employee through this process will be 1820 hours;
• Leave donation will be completely voluntary with each employee having the discretion to determine if they wish to donate leave;
• The department will maintain the records needed to manage and control the donation of leave within the outlined parameters; and
• Unused leave donated to the employee will be returned to the donating employees on a pro-rated basis.

 

Last Updated:: January 22, 2009
Reference: TBM 2008-028; TBM 2009-025