Guiding Principles

To maximize employee wellbeing and optimize individual autonomy and collective accountability, we have adopted a “free time off” policy. This policy seeks to balance the individual needs of each staff member with the needs of the organization as a whole by providing a mechanism for self-regulation, group feedback, and transparent accounting. 

SELC will also recognize all federal holidays as determined by the US Office of Personnel Management at this website, with the addition of the day after the National Day of Mourning (aka Thanksgiving). This balances the autonomy of individuals to take time off on their own initiative with certain days when all staff are encouraged to take time off.

Free Time Off means there is no universal limit to paid leave during a calendar year. Each Core Staff member has the opportunity and responsibility to take as much paid time off as they see fit, so long as he or she can fulfill his or her roles and responsibilities to the organization. Core Staff also have the option to take unpaid time off, which should be approved following the same process as paid time off. Other staff can suggest the use of unpaid time off if there are concerns about particular proposals for paid time off.

To help ensure individual accountability and effectiveness, each staff member will participate in a twice-yearly evaluation process to include a self-evaluation and peer evaluation of staff member’s performance. Concerns about excessive or improper use of Free Time Off policy can be considered during this evaluation process or brought up in the form of a proposal at an Operations meeting. See Performance Accountability Process Policy for further details.

Tracking Time Off

We maintain two processes for requesting time off: one for paid/unpaid time off and one for paid sick leave. Review the “How to request time off at the Law Center”  document below to learn the appropriate process for requesting time off.

Note about Paid Sick Leave: All employees will accrue paid sick leave at the rate of one (1) hour for every thirty (30) hours worked. Employees can keep track of paid sick leave hours by referencing their paystubs. Employees will accrue paid sick leave on all paid time off including vacation, federal holidays, and paid sick leave. There is no cap to the number of paid sick leave hours an employee can accrue. There is no waiting period before an employe can use their accrued paid sick leave. Employees can have a negative paid sick leave balance, but the Payroll, Time Sheets, New Hires role will keep an eye on any negative balances so that they are kept to a minimum.

Policies for Part-time Employees:  

• • Sick leave: For sick leave, all employees, part-time and full-time accrue 1 hour of paid sick leave for 30 hours worked. The financial operations person reports sick time  before every payroll. This is the same protocol for full-time workers. 

  • PTO: Part-time employees will add any time they should be paid for in their timesheet in order to be paid for those hours. Because of our unlimited PTO policy, we do not report our PTO to Gusto  or account for it outside of our internal tracking.

  • Holiday Pay: Part-time employees will get paid for all holidays at the pro-rated amount based on their hours. Ex. Someone who works 20 hours per week during a week where there is a holiday will get 4 hours off in recognition of the holiday, even if they don't normally work on that specific day. They would that work that week but work 16 hours and still get paid for 20 hours. Like with other PTO, this should be recorded in the timesheets. The part-time employee is accountable to reduce their hours on weeks when they will be paid for holiday hours.

  • Every proposal to approve part-time work should include a hard cap of hours set for the year (regular part-time is 20 hours a week, plus a maximum of 50 hours of additional hours for the year, for example.) Once this is clear, both the part-time employee and the financial operations person can be accountable to making sure that the employee is on track to staying under the hard cap.

(AC/IR)