Understanding Nevada Paid Leave

If you’re a Nevada employer with at least 50 people on staff, there’s a good chance that your paid time off policy (whether your organization calls it sick leave, sick days, vacation time, vacation days, personal days, personal time, or traditional PTO) violates state law.

Nevada’s mandatory paid leave law (originally known as SB 312, now codified in Nevada Revised Statutes as NRS 608.0197) was passed by the state legislature in 2019 and went into effect on January 1, 2020. Despite the law being in place for over half a decade, many employers have yet to bring their PTO policies into compliance. The consequences of not doing so can be significant; violations of the law may result in investigation by the Nevada Labor Commissioner, administrative orders requiring corrective action, and administrative penalties of up to $5,000 per violation.

What exactly does Nevada’s paid leave law require? (Hint: It’s way more than just that funny 0.01923 number)

NRS 608.0197 is a compulsory paid leave law that generally applies to private Nevada employers with 50 or more employees.¹ Covered employers must provide their employees with paid leave at a minimum accrual rate of 0.01923 hours for every hour worked.² This adds up to approximately 40 hours annually for a full-time employee, or about one hour per 40 hours worked.

All full-time and part-time employees must accrue at least the minimum amount of PTO beginning on their first day of employment, although employers may restrict use until the 90th calendar day.³ Employers do not have to provide this paid leave to temporary, seasonal, or on-call employees.⁴

Many businesses operate under the impression that their obligations end there. They slap the 0.01923 accrual rate into the handbook, make payroll adjustments accordingly, and move on. The law, however, has several more requirements that employers (and their policies) often fail to account for. 

Non-negotiables under NRS 608.0197  

• Minimum amount of earned leave required: The minimum amount of PTO that employers must give all full-time and part-time employees is 0.01923 hours for each hour worked.⁵ Employers may, of course, set their accrual rate higher than that.
• No reason for leave use necessary: Employees must be able to use their available PTO balance “without providing a reason to his or her employer for such use.”⁶ That’s right–if your employee wants to call in to sit on their couch and watch football, and they have the PTO balance to do so, they have that right under the law. Further, unless they volunteer that information, you shouldn’t ask. The law creates a statutory right for employees to use their available PTO as they see fit without having to justify their reason to their employer⁷ (and removes the employers’ administrative burden of having to investigate and analyze the circumstances of each and every time off request, which is a hotbed of managerial discretion ripe for discrimination claims).
• No denial of available leave use: If the last point gave you heartburn, you may want to sit down for this one. An employer shall not “[d]eny an employee the right to use paid leave available for use by that employee”⁸ or “[r]equire an employee to find a replacement worker as a condition of using paid leave.”⁹ In other words, if an employee has the PTO hours in their bank, the statute provides them the right to use it, period. Employers also may not require employees to find someone to cover their shift in order to be allowed access to their paid leave.¹⁰
• No retaliation for use of available leave: Just like employers cannot deny an employee use of their available paid leave, they also cannot penalize the employee for taking the time off upon their return (“An employer shall not… [r]etaliate against an employee for using paid leave available for use by that employee.”)¹¹ This is where employers that have gotten everything right compliance-wise up to this point can stumble. Whether it’s assigning the employee a “point” for the absence,¹² considering use of paid leave when determining attendance bonuses, characterizing use of paid leave as “attendance issues” in a performance review or promotion decision, or hitting the employee with the good ole “I could have used you here,” employers must avoid weaponizing an employee’s use of their available paid leave against them in any way. For managers who have historically used attendance as shorthand to assess performance, this may require a significant mindset shift.
• Notice “as soon as is practicable”: Employees need only notify their employer of their intent to use paid leave to cover an absence “as soon as practicable”¹³ under the circumstances. Because “as soon as is practicable” naturally varies from case to case (and encompasses emergencies where advance notice isn’t possible), this can be a frustrating feature of the law for employers trying to enforce their desired call-in procedure. Good news for them–the flexibility of the standard cuts both ways. While employers cannot punish employees who call in after the employer’s requested time frame when it was not practicable to do so, the law does not give employees a free pass to notify their employer that they will be absent whenever they feel like it. The law still obligates employees to act reasonably under the circumstances, leaving room for employers to establish legitimate call-in procedures and address situations where an employee could have provided earlier notice, but simply failed to do so.
• Recordkeeping requirements: Employers are required to provide each employee an accounting of the hours of paid leave available to them each payday.¹⁴ The law specifies that employers may use their existing payroll software to do so, but does not require the employer to use that method.¹⁵ Employers must also maintain records of each employee’s PTO accrual and use for at least one year after the record was made in order to provide them to the Labor Commissioner upon request.¹⁶
• Poster requirements: Like many other labor laws, NRS 608.0197 requires covered employers to post the Labor Commissioner’s bulletin regarding the law in a conspicuous location at each workplace maintained by the employer.¹⁷

Where Employers Have Options

• Front-loading PTO vs. accrued PTO: The law specifies two methods by which employees can obtain PTO. Employers can either frontload the expected number of hours the employee will be entitled to onto their balance on the first day of the benefit year,¹⁸ or allow employees to accrue PTO for each hour worked over the course of the benefit year.¹⁹ The law does not prohibit employers from applying different methods to different employee classifications (for example, employers may choose to frontload their exempt employees’ hours while requiring non-exempt employees to accrue hours). Employers who choose the frontloading method should remain cognizant of employees’ actual hours worked. Where employees work substantially more hours than anticipated, employers should evaluate whether additional paid leave is necessary to ensure compliance with the statute’s minimum leave requirements.
• Maximum amount of carryover: Employers who frontload PTO have leeway to decide whether they will allow employees to carry over hours into the next benefit year. Employers who choose the accrual method must allow employees to carry over at least 40 hours into the new benefit year, but may cap the amount of carryover allowed there if they wish.²⁰
• Payout of unused PTO at separation: As was the case before the paid leave law, whether employees are paid out any unused PTO at separation from employment is up to the employer. We recommend establishing a clear policy and applying it uniformly to avoid discrimination issues (as opposed to relying on managerial discretion to decide which employees “deserve it”). That said, the policy can be as generous or as restrictive as you like, ranging from payout in all circumstances to no payout at all for anyone.
• Using PTO during first 90 days: Employers are not required to allow employees to use PTO at all during their first 90 calendar days of employment, but employees must be able to use paid leave from that date forward.²¹ However, because the law requires employees to be given a minimum amount of paid leave for each hour worked, employers who use the accrual method must allow that PTO to start accruing from the employee’s first day of employment.²²
• Established notice/call-in procedure: Employers can set reasonable notification procedures that employees are expected to adhere to for both foreseen and unforeseen absences (2 weeks before pre-arranged leave and 2 hours before one’s shift begins for unexpected leave, for example). However, employers should be careful not to treat every failure to follow these procedures as a policy violation. The law requires that employees provide notice of PTO use “as soon as practicable” under the circumstances, and it stands to reason that in many cases, the need for leave will arise after the employer’s set notification window closes (ever had your kid throw up on the way to school?). At the same time, employers are not required to ignore instances where an employee could have provided advance notice of their PTO use and chose not to. The best approach is for employers to establish clear, realistic expectations around notification procedures while preserving flexibility to account for emergencies and other situations where earlier notice was not feasible.
• Minimum increment required: As long as it’s no more than 4 hours, employers have leeway to set the minimum increment of PTO employees are required to take when using paid leave.²³ This gives employers flexibility to align PTO usage with operational needs. For example, an employer could require employees to use PTO in one-hour increments, two-hour increments, or even half-day increments. The tradeoff, of course, is that larger minimum increments may result in employees using more PTO than they otherwise would have needed for a brief absence or appointment. Employers should therefore consider both administrative convenience and employee morale when deciding where to set the threshold.
• Defining the benefit year: The law does not place any express limits on how employers can define a “benefit year” when it comes to PTO other than it must be a 365-day period.²⁴ Employers can choose when they want employees’ paid leave to reset, whether that’s at the end of the calendar or fiscal year, on the renewal date of other employee benefits, or on each employee’s individual work anniversaries.

Can Nevada Employers Use Attendance Points with PTO?

Yes, Nevada employers may use attendance points with PTO, but the policy must comply with NRS 608.0197. Employers should review their systems carefully to ensure employees are not assigned points, disciplined, or otherwise penalized for using protected paid leave.

As discussed above, assigning “points” to an employee’s record (or any other form of discipline) simply for using their PTO is retaliatory under the law.²⁵ That does not restrict employers from maintaining an absenteeism policy or points systems that keep track of discipline for things like unauthorized late arrivals, early departures, and failure to follow the established call-in procedure when practicable to do so.

A note of caution, though: attendance point systems, in general, come with downsides, in addition to retaliation concerns under the paid leave law. Managers can become focused on counting points rather than evaluating actual performance, employee morale suffers when unavoidable tardies are treated the same as avoidable ones, and employers can inadvertently create legal exposure when protected absences (PTO, but also absences protected by the ADA, FMLA, USERRA, and other protected leave laws) find their way into the calculation. Moreover, because rigid point systems often produce outcomes that managers view as unfair in individual cases, employers may feel tempted to make exceptions for certain employees while strictly applying the rules to others. That inconsistency can create the very discrimination and favoritism concerns (and legal issues) the policy was intended to prevent.

Key Takeaways for Employers

Complying with NRS 608.0197 often requires a shift away from viewing every absence as a performance issue and toward recognizing PTO use as a statutory employee right that larger employers must account for (much like FMLA leave). For many employers, achieving compliance will require more than adjusting an accrual rate or updating payroll software. It may require a careful review of handbook policies, attendance programs, disciplinary practices, and manager training to ensure that employees are not being penalized, directly or indirectly, for exercising rights protected by state law. Employers that take the time to make those adjustments now will be in a much better position to avoid complaints, investigations, and costly compliance problems down the road.

By: Shay Digenan, Esq.

1. NRS 608.0197(9)(a). ↩︎
2. NRS 608.0197(1)(a). ↩︎
3. NRS 608.0197(2)(a). ↩︎
4. NRS 608.0197(8)(b). ↩︎
5. NRS 608.0197(1)(a). ↩︎
6. NRS 608.0197(2)(c). ↩︎
7. Id. ↩︎
8. NRS 608.0197(3)(a). ↩︎
9. NRS 608.0197(3)(b). ↩︎
10. Id. ↩︎
11. NRS 608.0197(3)(c). ↩︎
12. See Nev. Labor Comm’r Advisory Op. AO-2024-08 (Aug. 19, 2024) ↩︎
13. NRS 608.0197(d). ↩︎
14. NRS 608.0197(1)(h). ↩︎
15. Id. ↩︎
16. NRS 608.0197(5). ↩︎
17. NRS 608.0197(4). ↩︎
18. NRS 608.0197(1)(b)(1). ↩︎
19. NRS 608.0197(1)(b)(2). ↩︎
20. NRS 608.0197(1)(c). ↩︎
21. NRS 608.0197(2)(a). ↩︎
22. See NRS 608.0197(1)(a) (“An employee is entitled to at least 0.01923 hours of paid leave for each hour of work performed.”) (emphasis added). ↩︎
23. NRS 608.0197(1)(g). ↩︎
24. NRS 608.0197(9)(a). ↩︎
25. Nev. Labor Comm’r Advisory Op. AO-2024-08 (Aug. 19, 2024). ↩︎