As a CU employee, you'll accrue sick leave based on your employee type (university staff, classified staff or faculty).

Regardless of your employment type, you must request and record leave using the My Leave system, accessible through the employee portal. (Exception: Some departments use physical timecards/timesheets.)

Employees who do not accrue sick leave under CU's standard sick leave policy, including part-time employees, student employees, and contract workers, receive sick leave under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act. 

Use these resources for help recording leave:

You can accrue an unlimited amount of sick leave without ever losing it.

Leave type University staff (full time) and 12-month Faculty University staff (less than full time)
Sick time 15 days a year (10 hours a month) Prorated based on the total number of hours worked each month

How to calculate prorated leave for employees who work less than full time

If you work each day within a given month (this includes if you take paid leave during the month), you'll accrue the full amount of leave for which you're eligible. However, if your monthly work hours total less than 100 percent time for the month, you will not receive your full sick time accrual. Instead, CU will use the following formula to calculate how much leave you'll accrue.

Formula: Number of hours worked (including those taken as paid leave) / total number of work hours in the month

Example: In August 2025, there are 21 working days, or 168 working hours (21 x 8). If John, a university staff member, works 140 hours that month, you would divide 140 by 168 to get his proration factor of 0.833333. Multiply that number by 10 — the amount of sick leave John normally accrues each month — and you'll find that John will accrue 8.34 hours of sick time for August.

While most classified staff employees can accrue a maximum of 360 hours of sick time each fiscal year**, if they exceed that limit by fiscal-year end, CU will add to their vacation leave banks by automatically converting any hours over the maximum into vacation hours. To calculate this conversion, CU uses a 5-to-1 ratio (5 sick hours become one vacation hour). 

Full- and part-time classified staff employees hired after July 30, 1988, can accrue a maximum of 360 hours of sick time. For employees with a sick balance as of July 30, 1988 (referred to as "frozen sick balance"), the maximum accrual is that frozen sick balance plus 360 hours. Regardless of the employee's accrual balance, no more than 80 hours of sick leave can be converted to vacation each year (equal to 16 hours).

Note: If a employee exceeds his/her maximum and sick leave accruals, CU will reduce the vacation leave balance to the maximum allowance before it converts the employee's sick leave into vacation leave. After we perform that conversion, we will NOT reduce the employee's vacation leave again.

Leave type Full-time classified staff Part-time classified staff
Sick time 6.66 hours a month Prorated based on the total number of hours worked each month.
Maximum allowed accrual each fiscal year (July 1 - June 30)

360 hours (Note: Classified staff members who were grandfathered into a sick leave balance allowance clause will have a higher allowed maximum, based on their unused sick leave balance from June 30, 1988, plus an additional 360 hours.)

 How to calculate prorated leave for employees who work less than full time

If you work each day within a given month (this includes if you take paid leave during the month), you'll accrue the full amount of leave for which you're eligible (see table above). However, if your monthly work hours total less than 100 percent time for that month, you will not receive your full vacation and sick time accrual. Instead, CU will use he following formula to calculate how much leave you'll accrue:

Formula: Number of hours worked (including those taken as paid leave) / total number of work hours in the month

Example: In August 2025, these are 21 working days, or 168 working hours (21 x 8). If Kelly, a classified staff member who has worked for CU for three years, works 140 hours that month, you would divide 140 by 168 to get her proration factor of 0.833333. Multiply that number by 8 — the amount of vacation leave Kelly normally accrues each month — and you'll find that Kelly will accrue 6.67 hours of vacation for August. Use the same formula to calculate sick time accrual (0.833333 x 6.66), Kelley will accrue 5.55 hours of sick time for April.

Other resources

You can accrue an unlimited amount of sick leave without ever losing it.

Leave type 9-month Faculty 9-month Faculty (less than full time)
Sick time 11 days a year (10 hours a month) Prorated based on the total number of hours worked each month