SAVE Award 2011 Ideas

Personnel experts note that appx. 25% of federal employees use up all of their sick leave each year ... and there is absolutely no evidence that 25% of federal employees are actually sick for all of their designated sick-leave days. Combining annual and sick leave would eliminate this problem. I urge officials to consider combining annual and sick leave.

Federal agencies should allow employees to take a limited amount of unpaid leave each year. This would save the federal government money and provide employees with the option of additional leave each year. This gives employees the option of taking additional leave while allowing them to carry over annual leave into the next year. Many employees prefer to keep a bank of leave for emergencies but still desire extra time... more »

Allow employees to use a specific amount of unpaid leave, without penalty to leave, SCD, etc, upon supervisor's approval, of course.

Both the government and employee may benefit by sharing costs of training and travel. Training and travel dollars are limited. This strategy allows employees to attend training that they ordinarily couldn’t attend due to funding restrictions. For example, the employee pays registration fees, and the employer covers transportation and per diem. Or, the employee pays all costs but is granted administrative leave or can... more »

Government employees who accrue less amount of leave (such as 4 hours per pay period) would welcome an optional furlough during slow quiet season such as Christmas Holiday or Summer Vacation, to be able to take an optional leave without pay, as an option to be able to spend time with family. We should encourage supervisors and managers to make this type of leave available to their staff, and advise them that there should... more »

Allow any leave (sick, annual, lwop) to be transferred from one employee to another regardless of reason or relation.

Stop using manpower to determine whether someone qualifies for VLTP or not, just set up a log-in system where people that have leave to donate can offer leave to people who are in need of leave. People can enter their own names/requests, self-monitor their leave activity, and others can donate/give... more »

Many people save their leave until they "have" to use it during busy times when they are needed in the office - WORKING.

We use over 10 separate online systems to take care of daily administrative tasks, and I believe that we should combine them all into one website, similar to how Google lets you switch between e-mail, calendar, documents, photos, etc. with a simple mouse click.

Combining all these systems into one system and hosting it on a centralized server would take advantage of economies of scale, greatly reducing the electricity,... more »

((Please read this entire suggestion.))

In order to accomodate sound fiscal management with a true and measurable cost savings to the government and taxpayers, while respecting our workers, I suggest that as benefit to the government, employees should be able to donate 16 hours of annual leave per year to the government in lieu of an unpaid 40 hour furlough (should furloughs become neccessary).

How would this benefit... more »

Allow service members to save their leave as they desire. Do not take away any excess leave based on their decision to not take any during that Fiscal year. Instead do not offer to buy it back but allow them to save it unconditionally and apply it toward their departure or retirement of the military.

So if a military member is about to retire and their 20 year mark is identified, they have 142 days of leave saved up,... more »

Use an online system that allows employees to enter, request, and have approved all leave requests. This system could be tied into the current Vista, ETA, and MyPay systems.
Organizations could input top workload days in the calendar and block certain weeks/days to require employees to be present at the office/workstation.
Employee enters the system having limited access and reviews calendar for 'available' time periods... more »

I believe the U.S. government could save a lot of money by allowing active duty to sell their earned leave as much as they wish without waiting for reenlistment or separation. There is currently a 60 day cap on leave one is allowed to sell throughout their career. I believe with little effort, as far as details and implementation is concerned, (ie.. so many times a year, minimum number of days allowed to sell at once)... more »

I propose the development of an electronic leave request system. Most, agencies use some version of OPM’s form 71 for leave. A high percentage of our employees are in the 6 or 8 hours/pay period category for annual leave, which leads to a LOT of leave usage just to avoid use-or-lose status. I don’t have access to agency-wide statistics, so I’ve generated an estimate based on the breakdown at my location. Out of 241 current... more »