01.09.17 - Procedures for Training Directly Related to Employee's Job

Procedures for Training Directly Related to Employee's Job
(01.09.17/01-2011)

PA 20 Funds

1. Employees may be eligible for payment of tuition or training and book costs, less any outside financial assistance, if course or training is related to current employment.
2. Payment may be approved for courses or training that lead to the upgrading of skills for the performance of an employee's assigned work responsibilities. (See attached page for 29 CFR 785.29 regulations pertaining to training directly related to employee's job.)
3. Payment may not exceed 100% of tuition, lab costs, or training fees at a public or private institution, plus book costs, with books becoming the property of the program. Employees who wish to keep their books must pay their own cost.
4. Employees who accept agency payment incur a work commitment to the Head Start program.
5. Tuition and/or training fees are not an unconditional or unilateral employee right or benefit and are contingent upon management approval and availability of funds.
6. Conditions:
   1. Following completion of a course, employee must provide a copy of their grade slip ("C" or better is required) as evidence of satisfactory completion. This includes pass/fail courses completed at a "pass" level.
   2. If a "C" or better or a "pass" grade is not received, no further payments of tuition, fees, and/or books will be provided until employee reimburses the center (employer) for the failed course. This reimbursement should include the tuition, fees, and book costs that have been paid by the center for the failed course.
   3. An employee who receives tuition or registration payment in a year shall be obligated to continue employment for the following season.

The training is directly related to the employee's job if it is designed to make the employee handle his/her job more effectively as distinguished from training him/her for another job, or to a new or additional skill. For example, a stenographer who is given a course in stenography is engaged in an activity to make him/her a better stenographer. Time spent in such a course given by the employer or under the employer's auspices, is hours worked. However, if the stenographer takes a course in bookkeeping, it may not be directly related to his/her job. Thus, the time he/she spends voluntarily in taking such a bookkeeping course, outside of regular working hours, need not be counted as working time; where a training course is instituted for a bona fide purpose of preparing for advancement through upgrading the employee to a higher skill, and is not intended to make the employee more efficient in his present job, the training is not considered directly related to the employee's job even though the course incidentally improves his skill in doing his regular work.

[30FR 9912, Aug. 10, 1965]