TL;DR: Don’t use your vacation time when you run out of sick leave if you have to care for family due to medical procedures or ongoing medical care. Plan any optional medical procedures toward the end of the year when you’re more likely to be out of sick leave. If your employer pays you while you are on family caregiver leave, apply for that instead. If they do not pay you while on that leave, ask them if they could!
I have had the opportunity through my employer to apply for this leave twice in 2018. The first time was when my wife needed surgery and I needed to take a couple of days off a few months into the year. I had a discussion with our HR department about how I could take caregiver leave, and they said I needed to use up all of my sick leave before I could apply for the caregiver leave. I then made the argument to them that if I were to use all of my sick leave early in the year to take care of my wife, I wouldn’t be able to take family caregiver leave when I got sick or when I needed to take care of a sick child. They responded by saying that I should use my vacation days. This was unacceptable to me because I consider vacation days to be used for both mental and physical recovery for myself and my family. In addition to that, our vacation time rolls over up to a year worth each year, so unless I was in danger of using it or losing it, I want to keep as much of it saved up as possible to be paid out when I leave the company or used for larger vacations or to extend other leaves like parental leave for a newborn or adopted child. If we had a combined vacation and sick leave policy, it would be a different matter, and I would attempt to conserve my leave in that case even more.
Learnings
So, what I learned from this experience is that if your family member is going through a surgery or something that requires you to take time off to help them in recovery, plan it toward the end of the year when you are more likely to be close to using up all of your sick leave than at the beginning of the year so that you can take advantage of the caregiver leave and not have to dig into your vacation time.
The second time I was able to apply for caregiver leave, my son needed surgery which would take a week to recover from near the end of the year. Again, I went to my HR department and applied for the leave. This time it was a simple affair, where I had one sick day left by October due to mostly having to take care of sick children throughout the year and taking a couple of days for my own sicknesses. They needed me to fill out a form, and have my son’s doctor fill out the rest of it to prove that the medical leave was necessary. After that my leave was approved with no problem.
I am very fortunate in that in the last year my employer announced that they would pay employees that needed to take caregiver leave. This is not required by an employer, and usually the leave is unpaid or only part of your full-time pay.
Other Considerations
One factor that should be taken into account about leave is that rewards your company may give you can be pro-rated based on how much leave you take. It was the same with paternity leave when I took that, my bonus was reduced based on how much leave I took. It was totally worth it to me to lose that opportunity for money to spend those months with my sons. I consider spending time with my wife or son during their recovery after surgery worth it as well. If I were not paid for the time off, I would have to do more evaluation on whether my finances could sustain the hit of taking the leave or take vacation time or find other ways to pay for that time off.
If your employer doesn’t pay you if you take caregiver leave, you should ask them to! Whenever I see a company that has a benefit that is better than what I have, or something that my company doesn’t have at all, I always email our HR department suggesting that they offer it. This may be easier in the tech industry than in other industries due to the high demand in some areas, but it couldn’t hurt to ask regardless of where you work. If no one requests it, then they don’t know that employees want it or should have it. Get that movement started at your workplace and be a voice for change. If your workplace would look down on you for trying to improve the working environment and increase employee retention, then you should start looking for another job today.
Hopefully my story has given you some good things to consider when handling your own leave. I know I haven’t covered all cases of leave or company sizes and protections provided by state or federal government, but this should give you some ideas to do more research on your own for your specific situation.