All employers whose employees’ primary worksite is located in Maryland will be required to offer their employees paid sick leave. Below are some frequently asked questions about the state's paid sick leave requirements.
Who's required to offer employees paid sick leave?
- Employers with 15 or more employees that do not currently offer at least one hour of paid sick and safe leave for every 30 hours that an employees works.
- Employers with fewer than 15 employees must allow the same amount of time to employee, as unpaid sick and safe leave.
- When determining if an employer has 15 or more employees, the department will only consider employees who are employed in the state of Maryland. All employees who are employed in the state of Maryland will be counted toward the number of employees, regardless of hours worked.
- Employers that have an existing PTO policy that provides leave in an amount equal to or greater than the amount that is provided under the law do not have to provide additional leave.
- Employees employed for at least 106 days may use leave as it is accrued.
What employees are eligible for paid sick leave?
- In order for employees to be eligible to utilize the accrual, they must regularly work more than 12 hours a week.
- The department will only consider employees who are employed in the state of Maryland.
How much paid sick leave can employees accrue?
- Both paid and unpaid leave will accrue at the rate of 1 hour of leave for every 30 hours worked with a maximum of 40 hours. Employees can carry over 40 hours of unused time to the next year.
- Employers can front load the accrual of 40 hours at the beginning of the policy year, to be available for immediate use by employees. If employers choose to do this, they can allow the unused hours to expire at the end of the policy year.
- Employers are permitted to determine their own year for purposes of leave calculation.
Does my county have its own paid sick leave law?
- Under the state's act, counties are now pre-empted from enacting their own sick and safe leave laws.
- The ban on local sick leave laws applies retroactively to any enacted on or after Jan. 1, 2017, which includes Prince George's County's law.
- Because Montgomery County law was effective on Oct. 1, 2016, Montgomery County employers must still adhere to both county and state leave requirements. Learn more at Montgomery County's website.
How to set up accrual policies in OnPay
Go to Payroll, then Set up, and click Accrual Policies.
Click Add in the upper right to open the Policy Setup template.
The Policy Setup template is divided into two parts:
- Policy name and type
- Policy setup
Policy name and type
Give this policy a unique name that sets it apart from other accruals. The name should make it very clear how and when this policy will apply. For this example, we'll make a sick time policy that accrues annually, but we'll explore many more examples later in this article.
Determine the timeframe by which accrued time is earned. Your choices are “Per hour worked,” “Per pay period,” or “Annual on anniversary date” (hire date).
Choose when these hours will expire, if ever. Your choices are “Hours do not expire”, “Hours expire on anniversary”, or “Hours expire on Jan 1st”.
Select the accrual type.
Policy Setup
The Policy Setup is in three periods. This means hours accrued by workers can increase with their tenure in up to three stages. To create a probationary period, where no time is accrued until this introductory period is over, enter "0" per hour, then the number of months in the probationary period. If you don't want accruals to increase, enter the same information in each period. Unused hours will rollover to the next period. We'll explore more examples later.
Note: Setting the "Cap" is not the same as setting a "rollover limit".
- Some businesses limit the amount of unused time off that an employee can continue to hold going into a new year. This is to ensure that employees are taking the time they need to live a balanced and full life, as well as to protect the business from employees taking or cashing out large sums of paid time off all at once. We'll show you how to limit rollover in How to assign time off accrual policies to employees→
First two periods
For the first two periods, enter:
- How many hours can be accrued each year
- For how many months time is accrued at this rate
- The limit, or cap for these hours.
Third period
You don’t need to indicate the number of months in the third period. This period lasts for the remainder of the worker's employment.
Click Create when you're ready to finalize this accrual. Clicking Not Now will close this window, but will not save your progress.