Babies don’t arrive on a schedule. Neither do illnesses, injuries, or family emergencies. When those moments happen, employees need support—not a confusing web of forms, programs, and agencies to navigate.

That’s the idea behind SnoLeave, Snohomish County PUD’s new paid family and medical leave program that launched July 1. By bringing several existing leave programs together under one roof, SnoLeave is designed to make taking leave easier to understand and simpler to access.

While the program is new, the work behind it is not. SnoLeave grew out of discussions during collective bargaining and was further developed through extensive work by the PUD’s internal leave advisory committee, human resources, and employees from departments across the utility. Over more than two years, teams built the framework for the program, secured state approval, developed new technology and payroll processes, created employee resources, and conducted training sessions to prepare for launch.

By the time SnoLeave went live, dozens of employees had contributed to creating a program designed around a simple goal: Help employees take care of themselves and their families when they need it most.

“At the PUD, we focus a lot on the experience for our customers and providing them with safe, reliable power,” said Sara Kurtz, the PUD’s chief human resources officer. “For us in human resources, our PUD employees are our customers—and we want to make sure they have just as great of an experience working at the PUD and are able to take advantage of all of their incredible benefits.”

Why the major change?

Historically, Snohomish PUD employees navigated a complex landscape of overlapping leave programs, including Washington paid family and medical leave, extended sick leave, short-term disability, the Family and Medical Leave Act protections, and other leave benefits. While each program serves an important purpose, understanding how they worked together can be challenging, especially during already stressful life events.

The PUD also identified an opportunity to provide better value for employees. In 2023, the PUD paid more than $1 million into the state’s paid family and medical leave program while employees received about $285,000 in benefits. Human resources and the leave advisory committee began exploring whether a Snohomish PUD-administered, self-insured program could provide greater benefits while simplifying the overall experience.

“These changes should improve overall benefits the PUD is able to offer its employees while making the most of the money that is being paid into the leave programs,” said Sharon Reijonen, a now-retired senior manager in human resources at the PUD. “We also hope to improve the experience for employees who need to access leave benefits to take care of themselves and their families.”

SnoLeave is all-encompassing

SnoLeave combines several existing leave programs into a single, easier-to-understand experience that is administered directly by the PUD through human resources. It replaces Washington paid family and medical leave, extended sick leave, and short-term disability plans while continuing to coordinate with applicable state and federal leave protections.

Key benefits include:

• Up to 12 weeks of paid leave during a 12-month period for qualifying family, medical, and parental bonding events. In some cases, up to 14-18 months.
• Benefits that are equal to or greater than those previously available through Washington’s paid family and medical leave.
• A single program that replaces multiple leave programs, making benefits easier to understand and access.
• Direct support from the PUD’s human resources leaves team and payroll team instead of relying solely on state administration.
• Access to My Leave, a self-service portal where employees can request leave, upload documentation, view approvals, and track leave-related information.
• Continued job protection provisions for eligible employees who meet program requirements.

The result is a leave experience designed to be simpler, more transparent, and easier to navigate during life’s most important moments.

“At the end of the day, we want to make this easier for employees,” said Renee MacWatters a Snohomish PUD manager in human resources who helped lead the project. “SnoLeave brings everything together in one place, with one team ready to help and a simplified process. It’s been exciting to see this program come to life after so much work, and we’re eager to hear from employees and learn how SnoLeave is making a difference.”

A massive team effort

Although employees now see the finished product, SnoLeave represents one of the PUD’s largest employee-benefit initiatives in recent years.

A team with employees from human resources, payroll, finance, information technology, risk management, legal, corporate communications, and other supporting departments collaborated to design policies, secure approvals, build systems, create communications, develop employee resources, and prepare for launch. In all, more than 60 employees contributed to bringing the program to life.

Early milestones included establishing a SnoLeave Trust Board, comprised of Snohomish PUD employees from across the organization; obtaining state approval for the PUD’s voluntary paid family and medical leave plan; developing new payroll and reporting systems; and launching employee self-service tools. Employee education was also a major focus. Throughout the spring, human resources hosted manager training sessions, employee information meetings, Q&A forums, and transition support sessions to help employees understand how the new program would work and what resources would be available. The company’s intranet site became a central hub for FAQs, timelines, guides, and updates as the launch date approached.

“Working on—and launching—SnoLeave has been the biggest accomplishment of my PUD career,” said Reijonen, who retired last month after over 30 years at the company. “It is amazing to be part of a group that gets to initiate this change and support our employees through their life events. I’m excited to hear how SnoLeave is helping folks out.”

Programs like SnoLeave don’t happen overnight.

The human resources team, and the SnoLeave group as a whole, invested years of effort into making SnoLeave a reality. Their work, along with support from dozens of employees across the PUD, created a benefit designed to better serve employees and their families when they need it most.

The SnoLeave mission is simple: Provide meaningful support during life’s biggest moments and make it easier for employees to focus on recovery, family, and well-being instead of navigating complicated processes. For a program with an unofficial theme of “Leave Designed for Life,” that’s exactly what its creators hope to achieve.