Release Note - California COVID Paid Sick Leave

Background

As you may have heard, California has recently passed COVID Paid Sick Leave (PSL) which requires employers that have over 500 employees and do business in California to provide up to 80 hours of paid sick leave in response to COVID. This is effective immediately, and companies have until 9/20 to begin to offer, change formats on pay stubs and provide notice to employees.

Workplace Poster: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/COVID-19-Food-Sector-Workers-poster.pdf

FAQs regarding Legislation: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ-for-PSL.html

With the multiple changes that are needed in a short time-frame, our support team is ready to assist you on making the following changes:

Updating various payroll formats to display the required information
Creating an accrual plan with the correct COVID PSL logic
Setting each office to reference the COVID plan
Creating/configuring the COVID PSL pay type
Calculating the COVID sick balance that each personnel should be set to for hours already worked

Keep in mind that the legislation has already passed and the deadline is 9/20, so if you're wanting any assistance in the above bullet-points you must reach out to support as soon as possible!

Software Accommodations

Below are some steps on how to configure Staffing Complete to be able to accrue and track this COVID PSL. Please feel free to reach out to support if you need assistance setting this up in your database.

Setting up the Accrual Plan

This accrual plan will be used to track the balance of hours an employee has in their PSL bank.

Insert a new Accrual plan in the Setup Module->Accrual Plans tab.
Set the Plan Type to an accrual bucket that you are not currently using (most likely Vacation or PTO).

Enabling the Accrual Plan for your employees

In the Setup Module->Office->Settings Tab you can choose which accrual plan should be applied to Temp Employees and Internal employees. You may need to close and re-open Staffing Complete for any newly created Accrual Plans to show up.

Setting up the Pay Type

This pay type will be used when paying an employee PSL when they are self-quarantined.

Insert a new Pay Type in the Setup Module->Types->Payroll tab
Set the “Type” field to match the Accrual Plan type you set for your COVID PSL Accrual Plan
Check the “Deduct” check box for the Accrual Plan type you set for your COVID PSL Accrual Plan.
1. Ensure that you have “Earn *Accrual Plan*” checked for your Regular, OT, and DT pay types

Configuring your Check Stub

The legislation requires that the total paid sick leave available, PSL, must be viewable on the pay stub. Please contact support if you need assistance updating your check format.

Viewing and tracking accruals

The COVID PSL accruals will be tracked and displayed in the software just like any other accrual.

If you are viewing accrual information from the Personnel Module-> Accruals tab, you will navigate to the tab corresponding to the plan type bucket you setup your COVID PSL plan with (Vacation or PTO).
If you are viewing accrual information via report, you will use also use the reports for the bucket you configured the COVID PSL plan under.
If you need a report that specifically says COVID Paid Sick Leave, please contact support to create a variant report that has that specific verbiage.

Initial Balance

Based on the formulas / examples provided by the state, we recommend performing a 30 day look back (this will allow you to catch any bi-weekly pay period employees) to determine the initial accrual balance.

We have prepared a script that will automatically perform this lookback and set the initial balance for each employee in your database. If you would like us to set your initial balances for COVID PSL, please notify support of this request after you have already completed the above steps (accrual plan, pay type, check stub).
If you would like to handle the Initial Balance on your own, you can Insert the Starting Balance from the Personnel Module->Accruals Tab->Vacation Tab (or which-ever plan type you chose above to handle COVID).