Sick Leave Policy Template (Free, Compliant, Copy-Paste)
A sick leave policy template that satisfies state mandates, plus the four clauses that decide whether yours is actually enforceable.
Sick leave is the leave type most likely to be quietly non-compliant, because most small businesses wrote their policy before their state passed a mandate and never revisited it.
This page gives you a template that satisfies the common requirements, then explains the four clauses that decide whether it works.
What the law generally requires
Well over a dozen states plus many cities now mandate paid sick leave. The details vary, but the shape is remarkably consistent:
| Element | Typical requirement |
|---|---|
| Accrual rate | 1 hour per 30 or 40 hours worked |
| Annual minimum | 40 hours (5 days) is the most common floor |
| Carryover | Required, but total balance may be capped |
| Front-loading | Permitted as an alternative to accrual |
| Covered uses | Own illness, family illness, preventive care, and usually domestic-violence-related needs |
| Waiting period | Often permitted, typically up to 90 days before use |
| Documentation | Restricted; commonly only after 3+ consecutive days |
| Payout on separation | Generally not required |
Where a city ordinance and a state law both apply, the more generous one governs. Paid sick leave laws has the state-level picture, and California PTO laws covers the strictest common case in detail.
This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm against your own state and city before publishing.
The template
Paid Sick Leave Policy Effective [DATE] · Last reviewed [DATE]
1. Who is covered All employees — full-time, part-time, and temporary — are covered from their first day of employment.
2. How much you get [Choose one:] Front-loaded: You receive [40] hours of paid sick leave on 1 January each year, or on your start date if you join mid-year. Accrued: You earn one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, up to [40] hours per year. Your balance may accrue up to a maximum of [80] hours.
3. When you can use it Sick leave may be used for:
- Your own illness, injury, or health condition
- Diagnosis, care, treatment, or preventive care for yourself
- The same for a family member: child, parent, spouse or domestic partner, grandparent, grandchild, or sibling
- Absences related to domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking
You may begin using sick leave after [90] days of employment.
4. How to report an absence Tell your manager as early as you can, ideally before your shift starts, by [phone/message/SYSTEM]. If the absence is foreseeable — a scheduled appointment — give as much notice as you reasonably can.
You do not need to disclose your diagnosis or the nature of your illness.
5. Documentation We do not ask for a doctor's note for absences of [three] consecutive working days or fewer. For longer absences we may request reasonable documentation confirming you were unable to work.
6. Increments Sick leave may be taken in increments of [one hour / half a day].
7. Unused sick leave [Choose one:] Front-loaded: Unused sick leave does not carry over; a fresh [40] hours is provided each year. Accrued: Unused sick leave carries over to the following year, up to a total balance of [80] hours.
Unused sick leave is not paid out when your employment ends.
8. No retaliation Using sick leave will never count against you. We do not discipline, penalize, or factor sick leave into performance reviews or attendance records used for discipline.
The four clauses that matter
Documentation (clause 5)
This is the clause with the largest gap between what employers write and what they should write.
A doctor's note requirement for a one-day absence achieves nothing useful. It costs the employee a copay and half a day in a waiting room to obtain proof of something you would have believed anyway, and its real effect is that mildly ill people come to work instead. Several sick leave laws now restrict documentation requirements for exactly this reason.
Three consecutive days is the standard threshold. Below that, take people at their word. If you have a specific employee whose absences look like a pattern, that is a management conversation, not a policy setting.
Carryover vs front-loading (clause 7)
This is the choice that determines how much administration you sign up for.
| Front-loaded | Accrued | |
|---|---|---|
| Admin | Minimal — one grant per year | Ongoing accrual per pay period |
| Carryover obligation | Avoided under most mandates | Required, cap permitted |
| Cost | Slightly higher | Slightly lower |
| New hires | Full entitlement immediately | Builds gradually |
| Part-timers | Needs prorating | Scales automatically |
For a team under about twenty people with mostly full-time staff, front-loading is almost always the better trade. You give away a little more and remove an entire category of recurring work and error.
If you have significant part-time or variable-hours staff, accrual at one hour per 30 worked scales itself and is worth the extra machinery.
Separate or combined with PTO
Merging sick leave into one PTO bank is genuinely simpler, and employees like it. It has two real costs:
- In states requiring vacation payout, the whole combined balance may become payable at termination — including what you thought of as sick time.
- You have to be able to demonstrate that every employee had at least the statutory sick leave available. That is harder to prove from a single bank, particularly for someone who spent their balance on vacation in June and got sick in July.
The July problem
Non-retaliation (clause 8)
Short, and the one most sick leave statutes explicitly require. It also does real cultural work: it tells people the policy is not a trap. Include it even where it is not mandated.
Worked example: a 14-person retail business
The setup: Mixed full-time and part-time staff, hourly, in a state mandating 40 hours accrued at one per 30 worked.
Their decision: Accrual rather than front-loading, because half the team works variable hours and front-loading 40 hours to someone working eight hours a week would be indefensible to the rest of the staff.
The numbers:
| Employee type | Hours/year | Sick leave earned | Reaches 40 hrs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-time (40 hrs/wk) | 2,080 | Capped at 40 | Late May |
| Part-time (24 hrs/wk) | 1,248 | Capped at 40 | Early October |
| Part-time (10 hrs/wk) | 520 | 17.3 hours | Never reaches cap |
The cap means full-timers stop accruing in May and start again the following January. The 10-hour-a-week employee accrues throughout and carries their balance forward.
Their documentation threshold is three days. Their carryover cap is 80 hours. Their policy is one page.
Common mistakes
- Requiring a doctor's note for one day. Restricted in several jurisdictions, and counterproductive everywhere.
- Applying a waiting period to accrual rather than use. Most mandates require accrual from day one even if use can be delayed. Do not stop the clock.
- Excluding part-time staff. Nearly every mandate covers them.
- Counting sick leave in an attendance-points system. This is the most common way an otherwise compliant employer ends up on the wrong side of a retaliation claim.
- Forgetting family members. Sick leave mandates almost always cover caring for someone else, not just personal illness.
- Silently letting balances exceed the cap. Harmless for employees, but it overstates your obligation and hides errors.
Making the policy real
A sick leave policy is a set of rules about a balance: accrue at this rate, stop at this ceiling, reset or carry at year-end, keep it separate from vacation. Every one of those is easy to state and tedious to enforce by hand, and a rule that is not enforced is a rule you cannot demonstrate you followed.
SimplyPTO tracks sick leave as its own balance with its own rules — separate from vacation, with accrual, caps, and carryover applied automatically, and a record of every request if you ever need to show your working. Start free for up to 10 people.
Frequently asked questions
What should a sick leave policy include?
How much sick leave employees get, how it is earned, what it can be used for, how to report an absence, whether documentation is required and after how many days, what happens to unused time at year-end, and whether it is paid out on separation.
Can I ask for a doctor's note for sick leave?
Usually yes after a threshold — three consecutive days is the most common trigger — but several state and city sick leave laws restrict it, and some prohibit requiring documentation for short absences entirely. Set the threshold high enough that it is never the reason someone comes in sick.
Does sick leave have to carry over?
Under most state mandates, yes, accrued sick leave carries over, though employers can cap the total balance. Front-loading the full annual entitlement each year is the common way to avoid the carryover obligation entirely.
Is unused sick leave paid out when an employee leaves?
Generally no, provided sick leave is kept separate from vacation. If you merge sick and vacation into one PTO bank, the entire balance may become payable in states that require vacation payout, which is a strong argument for keeping two buckets.
Should sick leave be separate from PTO?
In states with sick leave mandates or vacation payout rules, separate is usually safer and cheaper. A combined bank is simpler to run and easier for employees to understand, but it exposes the whole balance to payout rules and makes it harder to prove you met the sick leave minimum.