Ithaca College

 Submitted for Mark Coldren, AVP for Human Resources

The Office of Human Resources would like to prepare the campus community to move to the on-line recording of our vacation, personal, and sick time through the Oracle Time and Labor system.  All staff members (non-faculty and non-union) will be able to record our Paid Time Away (PTA) – vacation, personal, and sick time on-line beginning June 1, 2010. 

All will have the ability to view time available through Employee Self-Service – just like when we sign on to enroll in benefits each year.  This ability to view, request, and approve will all be done on-line and not require any paper forms.  We believe it will be easy and allow employees and supervisors to manage Paid Time Away (PTA) more effectively and efficiently.  We all work very hard in our roles here at the College – but it is equally important that we take the time that is available to us to get away from work and “recharge” our batteries to come back ready for more!

The PTA on-line process will continue to follow the current policies regarding vacation, sick, and personal time.  The time that employees currently are entitled to by College policy will not change.  We are fortunate that Ithaca College identifies the importance of Paid Time Away (PTA) – our current policies are very generous when we include all of the holidays, the time between Christmas and New Year's, and the allotment of vacation, sick, and personal time.

The new features of the Paid Time Away (PTA) on-line system move away from “accruing” or “earning time as you go” to “being granted in advance”.   All of our Paid Time Away (PTA) will be loaded up front on an annual basis.  The best analogy is that Ithaca College is going to “deposit” time for employees on an annual basis in a “bank account”.  The employees (with supervisory approval) will then use time and subtract it from the system to manage their “balance”.   At the beginning of every fiscal year (June 1st) our entire allotment for the upcoming year will be “deposited into our account.”  The most that anyone will see in their balance is the maximum allowed as per our current policy.

Later this semester (May), there will be a process to ask staff members and supervisors to submit their time to enable us to “load” the Paid Time Away (PTA) system.  There will be specific instructions to allow us to have accurate balances for everyone beginning June 1, 2010.  We will be sending out more information throughout the spring semester to explain the policy, the OTL system, and how we will go through the implementation of the on-line PTA process.  If you have any questions, please contact me at x-3853 or mcoldren@ithaca.edu. 

Thank you!