NOTE: This message was emailed on Monday, Aug. 16, from Ballad Health Chairman and chief executive officer Alan Levine to all team members.
Good afternoon:
I wanted to share with you some steps we are planning to take which, hopefully, will be helpful to each of you as we continue to try to serve our communities through this ongoing pandemic.
Many of our team members have put enormous work time in, either providing direct patient care or supporting those who do.
As a result, you have foregone time that you’ve earned through your paid time off (PTO) accruals. We understand this presents a challenge, since our standing policy is that unused PTO over a certain threshold is not rolled forward.
The last thing we want to do is to penalize anyone who is putting forth extraordinary effort. We want you to keep the time you’ve earned, even as we are asking everyone to put in the time to help manage through this crisis.
We are therefore planning to take the following steps:
- I’ve approved a one-time “cash-out” of up to 40 hours of accrued PTO, which will be paid at the number of hours you choose to cash in, multiplied by your base hourly rate. You will receive more information from Human Resources on how to access your cash-out. Our plan is to open a window for requests in September, with the payout occurring in October.
- And, any amount of PTO above the threshold for rollover will be added to a frozen account for you, so you can keep the hours you have accrued.
I know some have had questions about unused PTO, and I hope this answers those questions. We certainly look forward to a time when we can use PTO more liberally, but for the time being, we do hope this at least preserves those hours you have been unable to access due to your unwavering commitment to our patients.
Thank you for all you do!
God Bless!
Alan
