Your County Info

TO: AFS Deputy Director ___________________
FROM: County Director____________________
DATE: ______________________
RE: Reduced Services: Essential Personnel List

DHS recognizes three levels of staffing during periods of reduced services:

1. Essential Staff – employees who are considered responsible for basic minimum services and who are required to work when state services are temporarily reduced due. Supervisors are always required to report to duty. An FLSA non-exempt employee maybe designated as essential, with advance written notice, if they are needed to sustain basic services for DHS clients. Examples of basic services are reception duties, processing SNAP applications and issuing EBT cards for emergency SNAP benefits. This memo will serve as notice to non-essential staff members that are being made essential or conditionally essential due to their assigned duties.
2. Non-Essential Staff – employees who are not responsible for basic minimum services when state services are temporarily reduced.
3. Conditionally Essential Staff – previously designated employees who are non-essential for all purposes except for activating events, at which time their status changes to essential. Examples of conditionally essential staff include, but are not limited to, Timekeepers when reduced services fall on the date of a payroll deadline or a Child Welfare Specialist who is notified that a child in his or her caseload requires immediate services. **Conditionally essential staff must be available telephonically, but are not on duty until an activating event occurs.

Administrative Leave:

530:10-15-71 (a) During their normal duty hours, employees on paid administrative leave due to unsafe working conditions are on stand-by or on-call status. (This includes all employees.)

Administrative Leave Accrual:

Essential employees, responsible for basic minimum services, who are physically at the jobsite, shall be entitled to accrue administrative leave on a straight-time basis, up to 8 hours per day for hours worked in their regularly scheduled work periods during such reduction.

Conditionally essential employees that are called in to work due to an activating event shall be entitled to accrue administrative leave on a straight-time basis, up to 8 hours per day for hours worked in their regularly scheduled work periods during such reduction.

Non-essential employees who report to work during reduced services are not entitled to paid administrative leave in addition to regular compensation.

Paid administrative leave does not apply to employees who are absent during the closure or reduction on any previously approved leave. (530:10-15-710-c)

Temporary employees shall not be granted administrative leave when state services are temporarily closed or reduced.

Every effort has been made to make this memo conform to statute, merit rule, and DHS policy. If there is any conflicting information in this memo, then the appropriate statute, rule, or policy takes precedence over what is stated here.

The following list identifies the status of ______________ County employees. Staffs are marked essential, conditionally essential or non-essential in the chart. Color coding is also used. Green means essential, purple means conditionally-essential, and red means non-essential. If you have questions or need clarification, please see your immediate Supervisor. Any requested changes must be made in writing prior to an activating event and forwarded to the County Director for consideration.