The District government recognizes that many employees are going above and beyond the call of duty by quickly adapting to new rules, policies, and procedures during the COVID-19 public health emergency. The federal government pledged to give local jurisdictions boosts in funding to address this pandemic. To receive these funds, the District government needs your help to accurately keep a record of all COVID-19 efforts and activities. Employees should use the new PeopleSoft "Task" feature to track any work they perform in support of the District’s response to the public health emergency.

How you code your time during the COVID-19 emergency depends on how you are working. Here are some general guidelines:

1. Are you working from home? When working from home, you should record all hours as “Telework (Situational) - STTW.”
2. Are you reporting to a duty station? If you are reporting for duty at a government facility or a government duty station, you should record these work hours as “Regular Pay – REG.”
3. Do you work overtime? If you are a union employee or a non-union employee covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), overtime will be added automatically. If you are exempt from the provisions of the FLSA, overtime pay is not authorized during the COVID emergency. FLSA exempt employees must use “Exempt Time Off Earned - ETE” for all overtime hours. Please see our guidance on Overtime for more details.
4. Does your work relate to the COVID emergency? If you are conducting work related to COVID, whether teleworking, reporting for duty, or working overtime, that time should be categorized as a COVID Task. See the next section for more details.

COVID-19 tasks are any tasks that an employee performs in support of the District’s mitigation, management, response, and recovery efforts for COVID-19. A simple question to ask to determine if your task is COVID-related is “If COVID-19 did not exist, would I still be working on this assignment?” If the answer is yes, then you should not record your task as a COVID-19 task.

For example, if you are a teacher who is implementing distance-learning and are teaching a class remotely because of COVID-19, you should not record your work as a COVID-19 related task, as you would still be teaching had there not been an emergency.

However, if you are an attorney, and must perform a legal analysis of COVID-19 related communications or guidance materials, you should record your task as a COVID-19 task, as you would not be performing that specific assignment if there was no COVID-19 emergency.

Employees who perform any tasks in direct response to, or in support of the District’s efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19 should use the new “Task” field in their PeopleSoft timesheets. Employees should use the “Task” field for regular work related to COVID-19 (work requiring you to report to a physical duty station), for telework related to COVID-19 work, and any COVID-19 related overtime. If you are not certain whether your work qualifies a COVID-19 work, please send an email to: [email protected] and ensure that “COVID 19 Task Tracking” is in the subject line for routing purposes.

For a step-by-step tutorial on how to use the new “Task” field, please watch the video provided.

Once you have watched the video, please record your tasks as appropriate going forward, and for any related tasks performed in previous pay periods. PeopleSoft will allow retroactive changes to timesheets for pay periods as far back as January 19, 2020.

When entering your Tasks, please enter a brief description of the task, and the number of hours you worked on the task in the comments section.

If you need additional guidance on reporting and entering COVID tasks in PeopleSoft, please see Attachment 1 – COVID-19 Task Tracking.

Managers, supervisors, and timekeepers should also watch the video to understand what qualifies as a COVID-19 related task. Managers, supervisors and timekeepers going forward will have two timesheets to approve: the employee’s original timesheet and the employee’s updated timesheet with the COVID code. When approving time, managers, supervisors, and timekeepers should begin by retroactively approving all updated timesheets in PeopleSoft. Managers, supervisors, and timekeepers must reference the employee’s original timesheet before approving the updated version to make sure the total number of approved hours on the updated timesheet match the total number of hours on the original timesheet. 

Please DO NOT MASS APPROVE TIMESHEETS. Instead, each timesheet should be individually reviewed to ensure that tasks are being correctly coded for COVID tasks and that the total number of hours match before approving each timesheet.

Managers, supervisors, and timekeepers must work with employees to make retroactive adjustments to employees’ timesheets to properly reflect COVID related work that has already occurred. These retroactive changes must be made no later than April 25, 2020. Additional details on retroactive adjustments is included in Attachment 2, Personnel Time Tracking.

Should you have any questions related to task tracking, please send an email to: [email protected] and ensure that “COVID 19 Task Tracking” is in the subject line for routing purposes.

Should you have any questions related to payroll and timesheet submission/approval related to COVID-19, please send an email to: [email protected] and ensure that “COVID 19 Timesheet Tracking” is in the subject line for routing purposes.

Should you have any questions or concerns relative to technical issues, please contact the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) directly at (202) 727-2277 and choose option 1 for the OCTO HelpDesk.

1. 6-B DCMR Human Resources Management, 6-B DCMR § 100 (2019)