What’s Up with Well-being Leave?

You may have noticed a new entry on your pay stub this year: eight hours of well-being leave. This leave is the result of new language in our 2022 – 2025 contract.

Employees will accrue eight hours of well-being leave per year, but the bank will cap at 24 hours — that's to encourage folks to actually use the time during the course of the year. An additional eight hours will be added to this bank yearly, on one’s anniversary date.

This leave can be used for any reason, and you don’t need need to elaborate to your manager the reason you’re using it. We envision most employees will use this when they need a “mental-health day,” whatever that means to them — a short-notice day trip to the coast to relax at the end of a busy week, binge-watching Netflix from bed because you’re too burnt out to work that day, a prescheduled day off to spend at the park with your children, etc. [Ed. Note: Per HR, if your shift length is longer than 8 hours, you should use VAC or SIK accruals to make up the difference not covered by wellness leave.]

Employees are encouraged to give their manager as much notice as possible, but will not receive an attendance occurrence for using this time, even at the last minute — just be sure to follow your department’s usual call-out procedure. In addition, employees will not be required to deplete this leave during protected absences such as FMLA.