If an Ohio University staff member gets pneumonia and is sick for four weeks, he or she will go unpaid once they run out of sick leave.
OU’s Classified and Administrative Senates are leaning hard against top administrators to allow healthy employees to cough up their sick days for ailing colleagues.
The senates are looking into creating a sick leave policy under which employees can donate sick leave days to those whose paid-days off are exhausted. OU is the only university of almost 60 universities surveyed by Classified Senate that does not offer a sick leave donation policy, said Bonnie Behm-Geddes, chair of Classified Senate.
When employees run out of sick days, there is currently no policy to compensate them when they are both unable to work and fail to qualify for temporary disability leave, which kicks in after 90 days of illness, said Administrative Senate Chair Josh Bodnar.
“If an employee finds themselves in that situation, there’s not much they can do,” Bodnar said. “So the idea is to put something in place so they can remedy that.”
The sick policy committee, composed of Classified and Administrative senate members, is looking into two ways for healthy staff members to donate sick time, Bodnar said.
If OU creates this donation policy, employees could either donate their extra sick days to a pool that a sick employee could draw days from or they could donate days to a specific sick employee who has run out of days, he said.
Although Administrative Senate just began working with reforming the current sick leave policy, Classified Senate has been looking into a sick leave donation program for five years, Behm-Geddes said.
OU President Roderick McDavis recognizes staff and faculty’s desire to implement such a policy, said Jennifer Kirksey, McDavis’ chief of staff.
“President McDavis is supportive of the concept and charged Vice President (for Finance and Administration) Stephen Golding with organizing a group led by Human Resources to develop a proposed policy and process to implement a sick leave donation program at Ohio University,” Kirksey said in a statement. “The group’s report is due later this fall.”
In addition to the policy, Bodnar said Human Resources is looking into a short-term insurance program — separate from the sick leave donation program — that staff could pay into to assist colleagues before they enter temporary disability leave.
“There are things they need to update as a result of that as well, so they could dovetail together if we knew the requirements on both sides,” Bodnar said.
Behm-Geddes said she is excited to begin collaborating with Administrative Senate for the project.
“We try to take care of each other,” she said. “This would be a nice easy way for people to just donate to a person.”
DK123111@ohiou.edu
@DanielleRose84
