© 2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2025 ed. | 143 2. Notification of Intent to Use Sick Time and Employee Certification Employees are required to provide reasonable notification of their intent to use sick time. If use of sick time is foreseeable, an employer may require up to seven days’ advance notice, provided that the employer has a written policy setting forth this expectation.844 If an employee’s need for sick time is not foreseeable, or is not foreseeable seven days in advance, the employee must provide “notice that is reasonable under the circumstances.”845 For example, employers may require employees to use reasonable notification systems customarily used to provide notice of absences or requests for leave.846 Even if an employee fails to comply with notification requirements, the employer may not prevent or discourage employees from using sick time provided that the employee has sick time available for use and intends to use it for one of the four permissible purposes listed above. Employers may seek certification of an employee’s need to use sick time if the employee’s use of sick time: Exceeds twenty-four consecutive hours, or Exceeds three consecutive days on which the employee was scheduled to work, or Occurs after four uses of unforeseeable and undocumented sick time within a threemonth period,847 or Occurs within two weeks of an employee’s last scheduled day of work before termination of employment, except in the case of temporary employees.848 Acceptable forms of certification include written documentation signed by a health care provider indicating the need for the sick time taken. To certify use of sick time to address the effects of domestic violence, an employee may submit a restraining order; police record; documentation of the abuser’s conviction; a signed statement by a social worker, clergy member, legal advocate, or the like; or a signed written statement from the employee attesting to the abuse. The ESTL has strong privacy protections for employees. Certification forms should not state the nature of an employee’s illness or the details of domestic violence, nor should employers seek such information from employees. 844 940 C.M.R. § 33.05. 845 Id. 846 Id. 847 For employees seventeen years old or younger, employers may also seek certification for use of sick time that occurs after three uses of unforeseeable and undocumented sick time in a three-month period. 940 C.M.R. § 33.06. 848 940 C.M.R. § 33.06 (listing the circumstances under which employers may request certification).
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