Use or donate excess vacation hours by June 30
Employees with excess vacation hours should use them or donate them to leave banks before they are removed from their accounts during leave sweeps.
What are leave sweeps?
Leave sweeps remove University and Classified Staff excess vacation and/or sick leave hours, as required by state and university policies. The process helps to ensure employees use their hard-earned vacation hours, and allows them to confirm no errors occurred with their leave throughout the year.
Excess hours will be removed from employee accounts after the July monthly payroll, so they should be used by June 30. Employees who are unable to use their leave by this deadline may donate their vacation time to a leave bank.
Each campus has its own leave-sharing policy:
Vacation and sick leave limits: Leave limits vary based on whether an employee is University Staff, 12-Month Faculty or Classified Staff. They may maintain hours up to their limit but anything over is considered excess.
University Staff
University Staff and 12-Month Faculty have a limit of 352 vacation hours with no sick leave limit.
Classified Staff
Vacation hours
Maximum vacation hours are determined by length of service:
- 1-5 years of service: 192 hours
- 6-10 years of service: 240 hours
- 11-15 years of service: 288 hours
- 16+ years of service: 336 hours
Sick hours
Maximum sick leave is 360 hours and does not vary by length of service. However, if employees have 80 or fewer excess hours, 20% of them can be converted to vacation hours.
For example, 40 excess sick hours could be converted to eight hours of vacation leave.
Learn more about leave policies: Please review University Staff leave policies or Classified Staff leave policies, and direct any questions to your campus Human Resources office. For CU Denver or CU Anschutz Medical Campus, please contact your department payroll liaison.