OPM Recaps Annual Leave Procedures, COVID-19 Special Rules
Federal employees may have some extra annual leave set to expire, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recent memorandum.
Congress allowed federal employees to carry over seven days of leave from 2020 to 2021, but employees will lose that extra leave if they don't use it by January 2. As a rule, federal employees can carry over 30 days of annual leave, but a provision in the 2021 defense policy bill allowed a one-time exception to that policy for most of the federal workforce during COVID-19.
“To avoid the cumbersome process for a large number of employees who have been required to work during this national emergency, the OPM director took steps to issue interim regulations that allowed agencies to continue to meet their vital missions while streamlining the process for restoration of annual leave for employees whose services are essential to respond to the COVID-19 national emergency,” OPM Director Kiran Ahuja stated.
Employees have the following time periods to use the restored annual leave once the agency determines that no longer using the covered employee's services is essential to the response to the national emergency or that the employee can follow the regular leave scheduling procedures:
The deadline for scheduling and taking restored annual leave of 416 hours or less for full-time employees is two years after the date set by the agency head (or her designee) as the termination date of the exigency. Each 208 hours of excess annual leave or any portion thereof, extends this period by 1 leave year.
A part-time employee (or designated designee) must schedule and take restored annual leave equal to or less than 20 percent of the number of hours in his or her planned annual tour of duty 2 years after the termination date of exigency of public business as determined by his or her agency head. This period is extended by 1 leave year for each additional number of hours of excess annual leave, or any portion thereof, equal to 10 percent of the number of hours in the employee’s scheduled annual tour of duty.
Employees on unusual tours of duty are subject to special conversion rules.
OPM’s reminder also included agency administrative tasks regarding COVID-19 National Emergency Authority. Specifically, agency heads or designees are responsible for carrying out the following tasks:
Identify the specific employees or groups of employees whose services are essential in response to the national emergency.
Maintain continuous oversight of the agency's response to national emergencies, preventing employees from scheduling or using their annual leave to respond to national emergencies.
Determine and notify in writing the termination date of the exigency of the public business for each employee or group of employees, in accordance with regulatory criteria.
Agencies are also required by OPM to periodically monitor their response to a national emergency deemed to be an exigency of public business. In the event that an exigency has not been terminated by action of the President or OPM, the exigency must be terminated for each covered employee on the date one of the following events occurs: the employee's services are no longer essential to response to the national emergency or the employee can follow routine leave procedures upon declaration of the national emergency for 12 months (the agency may extend that time) or upon transfer to a position that does not involve these services.