Arapahoe County HR proposes PTO, on-call and language-testing updates; board approves several changes and asks staff for guardrails

Arapahoe County’s Human Resources department presented a package of paid-time-off and compensation policy updates to the Board of County Commissioners and won board support for several changes while staff agreed to refine others for later action.

"One of our goals was to look for business process improvement," said Patrick Hernandez, director of human resources, describing an upgrade to the county’s HCM system that enabled clearer PTO and leave coding. Hernandez said the changes correct legacy practices, simplify accruals and bring county practice in line with collective-bargaining agreements.

What the board approved - Compensatory time cap: The county will standardize the compensatory-time cap at 80 hours (previously 78 in some groups) so all comparable positions have the same limit. The board signaled consensus support. - First/last-month accruals: HR will apply the existing policy that employees earn a full monthly accrual if they work any hour in a month, including first and last months of employment, to remove a legacy proration practice and simplify term payouts; board members agreed the change should proceed and asked HR to note any modest fiscal impact. - Exempt-employee holiday, bereavement and jury rules: For employees in exempt roles, holiday, bereavement and jury-duty leave will be processed as full paid days rather than hourly time; HR also proposed refunding any vacation hours exempt employees used earlier in 2025 to substitute for holiday leave, and the board approved restoring those hours for 2025 as an equity measure. - Court holiday schedule: HR will create a second, alternate holiday schedule for employees who work at the courthouse (judicial staff, DA offices and related roles) because those courts may be open on the day after Thanksgiving or on Christmas Eve; the board endorsed the approach and asked HR to produce the annual holiday schedule for board approval. - On-call shifts: The board approved clarifying the definition of an on-call shift so a single 24-hour on-call assignment counts as one on-call day, resolving a pay interpretation that had allowed duplicate day counting in some sheriff-office schedules.

Language-testing policy and guardrails HR staff proposed changing the policy for dual-language pay and testing; the county’s current policy requires testing and periodic retesting for employees who qualify for language-differential pay. Jennifer Cooley and Julie Weber explained that mandatory retesting every two years had become onerous and sometimes unnecessary for employees who regularly use a second language on the job.

Commissioners asked HR to draft clear "guardrails" that would define when a supervisor may request a retest (for example: documented performance concerns, resident complaints or sustained changes in job duties), and recommended extending retest intervals for lower-use (ad hoc) language assignments. The board asked staff to return with written guardrails before implementing a no-automatic-retest approach.

Compensation benchmarking HR reported it has moved from relying on a single private vendor to a new Colorado public-employer compensation cooperative (CPAC) managed by Larimer County and a MarketPay (Payscale) database. The board gave direction to add the State of Colorado as a peer in the county’s benchmark group; HR said some previously listed peers have been inconsistent participants and staff will continue outreach.

Why it matters: The HCM update and policy package aim to reduce manual payroll work, standardize benefits administration and address equity among employees with different work patterns. Several changes will have small fiscal effects on payouts; HR told the board that those impacts had been vetted by executive staff and would be tracked.