Changes to Connecticut's Paid Sick Leave Law

The recent expansion of the state's paid sick leave law. A crucial issue for business owners to understand as it will significantly impact how they manage their workforce and structure their benefits.

Attorney Kate Cerrone is a real estate and business law attorney practicing in Connecticut. Learn more at KateCeroneLaw.com. 

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we're diving into a topic that affects nearly every worker and employer in Connecticut. The recent expansion of the state's paid sick leave law. A crucial issue for business owners to understand as it will significantly impact how they manage their workforce and structure their benefits. So, really interested to hear more about how the paid sick leave law is going to affect us here in Connecticut. Yes, there's a significant change that is coming. Starting on January 1st, Connecticut is significantly expanding its paid sick leave law. So it's expanding the benefit that will be extended to employees. The current law only covers Employers with 50 or more employees and applies only to service workers. So up until now, if you had less than 50 employees, it was really up to you as an employer how much paid sick leave you were going to provide. But the expansion will eventually cover almost all employees and all employers in the state. It's very sweeping. And the rollout, however, is staggered based on employer size. So on January 1, 2025. So this coming January, just a couple months from now, employers with 25 or more employees must comply. A year later, on 1-1-26, it expands to employers with 11 to 24 employees. And finally in 27, employers with even just one employee will need to provide paid sick leave for business owners. This means that even if you were not previously required to provide paid sick leave. You likely will be soon. It's a substantial, substantial change requiring careful planning and adjustments to HR policies and payroll systems. Kate, how do employers determine their employee count for this law? Yes, employers should use the number of employees on their payroll during the January 1st payroll cycle. This is crucial for businesses near the thresholds. So for instance, if you typically have 23 employees, but you reach 25 during the January 1 cycle, you'll need to comply starting that January 1, 25. And who is covered by this? Is it just full time employees? The new law will cover almost all employees with the exception of seasonal employees who work 120 days or less per year. For business owners, this means providing paid sick leave to nearly all employees. This is very important, including part time workers. So a lot of people think of benefits only be extended to full time employees. Well, this law changes that definition for sick time. So it's important to start considering how this will impact your budget and your staffing decisions as businesses. Well, how will the sick leave accrual work? Well, so employees will accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked starting on the effective date of the law or their hire date. So employees accrue based on a 40 hour work week or their usual hours. If less. Business owners will need a system to track hours worked and sick leave accrued for each employee. This could require updates to payroll or time tracking systems. Is there a limit to how much sick leave can be accrued or carried over? So employees will be able to carry over up to 40 hours of unused sick leave annually. However, employers can choose to front load the leave at the start of the year, which eliminates the need for carryover. But for business owners, this presents a strategic decision. Front loading can simply simplify the administration, but might mean providing more sick leave than an employee would have accrued, especially if they leave the company early in the year. So if you have a brand new employee and you're not sure if they're going to go through the training process with you and stay for very long, it's probably a good idea to let them accrue rather than providing it upfront. And can you back up to that front load term? What does front loading believe at the start of the year mean? So you could estimate how much your employee will accrue throughout the year and you can provide that to them all at once. So if you, and that might be a strategically good idea if you have an employee that you're very much interested in. Keeping on your workforce and they have an event and this can apply either if they themselves are sick or someone in their family is ill and you want to actually provide, like entice them to stay with your business, you might decide to pay them in full for their full sick leave. Now specifically, what can employees use this sick leave for? So they can use it for their own or a family member's mental or physical illness, injury, health condition preventative care. It also covers situations like workplace or school closures due to public health emergencies, circumstances related to family violence or sexual assault. There's a very broad definition in this law. A family member is defined broadly, potentially leading to more frequent use of sick leave. So businesses should be aware that it used to be really your own serious health condition that you could provide. Like for example under the Family Medical Leave act, which did not provide pay, it just kept your position open, which will still apply. And then you as a business owner could decide, well I can afford to pay, for example my employee, three sick days. Now we're talking about a mandate of that the time accrued based on how many hours you've worked, that you will be required to pay that sick leave. So one hour for every 30 hours worked. Are there any restrictions on when employees can start using their accrued sick leave? So there is a waiting period when they first start their job. It's 120 calendar days of employment. So business owners should communicate clearly that there is a waiting period for new hires. So but then, but the employer does have the option of as we said, front loading. So deciding to pay as well. What about documentation? Do employees need to provide any proof when they use their sick leave? So this is a very interesting part of the law. And by interesting I mean kind of surprising. Employers cannot require their employees to provide documentation to support their use of paid sick leave. So for business owners this means trusting your employees when they request sick leave. You'll need to update your policies and train Your managers on these new requirements. Surprising. Are there new requirements for employers in terms of notifying employees about this benefit? Yes. In general, I would say this law puts a lot of the documentation and the notice responsibility on the employer. The employers must give all employees written notice about their paid sick leave rights by 1-1-25. For those employers that are covered or upon hire, whichever is later, they also need to post notices in English and Spanish in the workplace to provide them electronically for remote workers. Additionally, employers must give employees written notification of their available and used paid sick leave each paid period. This will likely require updates to payroll systems. You have covered a lot of territory here. It seems like there's a lot to know about and considered with regard to these changes. What would you recommend business owners do to Prepare for this January 1st rollout? So, really, there's five things I would say to business owners. Number one, review and update your sick leave or PTO policies to meet the new requirements by the January 1st deadline. Number two, add the sick leave notice to your new hire packet and your employee handbook. Number three, prepare to display the required sick leave poster when it's available. And that will be available through the Connecticut Department of Labor, but no later than January 1st. Number four, plan for tracking and reporting sick leave accrual and usage in your payroll systems. Number five, train your managers and HR staff on these new requirements. Even if you're a smaller business with a later compliance date, start preparing now. These changes may require significant adjustments to your policies, systems, and your budgets. It's going to be a costly mandate. Is there a background to where Connecticut came up with this? Is this something that Connecticut created, or was the law modeled after another state where it worked there and we said, let's try it here? Yeah, that's a very good question. I actually don't know the background of how it went through the legislature. I do know that it was inspired by implementing changes for employees. I think post pandemic, everyone's been very concerned about the safety of employees. And so some of this came out of the discussion about time off for school closures for the COVID pandemic, for example. I think a lot of employees were not paid for time when they had to stay home with their kids, for example. And so I think it does help support employees keeping them A productive, a happy workforce. I think there's a lot of focus lately on mental health. So employees sometimes need some time off work. And I think the idea is that you shouldn't have to lose your job or lose your pay if you're suffering from a mental or physical ailment. And you mentioned the pandemic. It would seem to me that this paid sick leave law would also cover people that need to take a couple days off because they tested positive. We didn't have to worry about that four or five years ago, but now that is a factor. So there's one more reason to need sick leave time. That's true, that's true. It's actually keeping us all safe. And it's also providing security for employees who are very much dependent on their pay week to week. So there is a balance of fairness that if you honestly need to take some time to keep yourself and your fellow co workers safe that you shouldn't have to give up your pay. Are there checks and balances with this paid sick leave law? By that I mean what if employers or employees abuse this, like taking time off that they wouldn't have taken off before, that they don't really need now. And frankly Wayne, that's a disappointing part of this law in my opinion. I feel that if employees will be benefited by this change in the law, that they should have to provide documentation for the reason that they're taking time off. So I think that employers should tune into their employees. This you should be very careful about the talent that you're bringing into your business. Get to know your people very well, bring in people that you can trust because there is a chance of abuse of this, of this law. And hopefully a lot of times when there's a brand new law, especially when it's a reaction to social problem out there, there will be tweaks that need to be done and we should probably keep in touch with our legislature to let them know through our business associations and through chamber of commerce, to really be honest about how this law is going and whether it's actually harmful for some businesses if there may be some abuses. And how does this law differ from before? Like if I needed days off because I was sick, this company gave it to me without docking me. I presume that would still happen after January 1st. Oh yes. So there. I know that. I think most small businesses that I tend to work with right now they give their employees about maybe three days that are paid that are either personal or sick. And if you have an employee that's been with you for a long time that you're very interested in keeping in your workforce, you will extend that benefit. And right now, it's up to the employer. So I think the key here is that right now, prior to when this becomes effective, the employer has been able to check their bottom line, to check their budget and to say, listen, I can afford to spend a little money on a particular employee because I'm interested in keeping them in my workforce and sometimes sitting the employee down and saying, listen, we're all in this together. We really don't have the budget for this right now. And that flexibility will be gone. Well, thanks for these tips, Kate. Before we wrap up this first episode, is there any other information you want to share with our listeners? So I just encourage them to check in with their. Again the Connecticut Department of Labor is a great resource. Your local business association. I'm very active in the Putnam Business Association. We have a lot of very good active groups where, like I said, we're all kind of in this together. Check in with your HR department. You can reach me at the Northeast law Center at 860-928-2429. My email is kceronectlaw.com if you want some more information or need help from the legal perspective.