Employee Absences and Time Off Overview

How will you address employee absences and time off in your early learning setting? Life happens. If you have employees, they will need to go to appointments, they will get sick, they will have family events to attend – long story short, they’re going to be absent sometimes, and sometimes it will be short notice. There will be situations where you’ll be able to handle it smoothly, and situations where it’s going to feel like a mud-covered mess.

As you think about what you want your program to look like, consider the procedures for when a staff member needs to request time off in advance, or when a staff member wakes up with food poisoning. How will you maintain a compassionate, professional atmosphere? What steps can you take to create systems that function as smoothly as they can? If your center is small, you might give your personal phone number to your staff, and just have them text you as soon as they know they need time off.

For larger groups, you might have an online system or dedicated administrative person who coordinates teacher coverage. Think through how coverage for your staff will be provided: are teachers required to find their own substitutes from a certain list? Are some classrooms well-within the childcare ratio of your area, allowing you to pull staff from one room to cover another? Are you comfortable outsourcing substitute coverage to an agency? (As an aside, we have a whole post about substitutes to help you think through that.)

Some programs provide a certain amount of sick leave and paid time off: sometimes they’re separate (such as three sick days and five days of PTO/vacation) and sometimes they’re grouped together (eight days of PTO, to be used for whatever reasons.) Sometimes, time off is accrued based on time spent working (X amount of PTO for Y number of hours worked). Sometimes it’s simply provided at the time of hiring (you can take seven days off per school year, in addition to federal/bank holidays.)

From a personal perspective, simply providing a specific amount of time off for whatever reason to your employees once you hire them is the simplest, most equitable way to encourage staff to take the time off that they need. After all, it’s not your job to police how people are using their days off, so designating some days as ‘sick’ and some days as ‘personal’ can be unnecessarily fussy.

In many examples, you’ll read about how a certain number of short-notice absences leads to disciplinary action. Consider if this is really a necessary addition to your handbook: do you need a punitive point system for your staff, or can you talk it out when a lot of absences start happening without a clear reason?

If you’re working in an administrative capacity, get familiar with local and federal laws surrounding leaves of absence for things like jury duty, parental leave, military leave, and FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) You’ll also need to understand how PTO is ‘paid out’ to employees who leave your program without using it.

Where to Include

At Playvolution HQ, we recommend using the Three Handbook Method.

Consider adding this policy to your Staff Handbook.

Considerations

• When will your program be closed? Especially if you operate year-round, staff will begin to tire without a break. What days can you provide professional development, half-days, or close the center to give everyone a change to recharge? Can you match these days to a local school district (either following their time off or operating during their time off and closing at another date – cases can be made for both)?
• Are there times when you will automatically deny time off requests, such as the first week of school or the day(s) before a long break? Why? How will your staff feel about those decisions, and what kind of environment do they reflect?
• Who approves time off? Just the individual in charge, members of a team, or a combination? Is a written procedure necessary, or is a text thread or afternoon conversation good enough?
• For sick days, will you require a doctor’s note? After how many days? In what ways does requiring a note serve your program, and it what ways could it present a barrier to your staff? (Particularly if you aren’t providing health insurance, how much money would it cost for your staff member to go to a doctor for a note?)
• If two staff members request the same time off, how will you decide which one to approve and which to deny? What factors into your decision, and what does that show you value?

Sample Policies

NOTE: The following samples are real-world examples relating to this post’s topic and are provided as a reference for creating your own policies and procedures. Sharing them here is not a recommendation of their content.

Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 3

Sample 4

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