2025 Leave Certification Process

It is time to prepare for the required two-step annual leave certification process. University Human Resources needs your help to ensure the process goes well. UHR encourages you and your teams to begin Step 1 of the certification process early, as outlined below.

To avoid last-minute issues, check with employees and supervisors in your colleges to resolve leave issues now to ensure you and your teams have fewer issues to manage in January. Beginning Step 1 now will make the certification process much easier for you and your teams to manage.

Step 2 of the certification process begins in January with an email from UHR to employees asking them to certify their leave. Employees should not certify their leave before getting our email.

The UHR deadline to complete the certification process is Jan. 30, 2026. Departments and units may have established and communicated internal deadlines that occur before UHR’s deadline. If your department or unit has an earlier deadline for leave certification, please adhere to that deadline.

Step 1: Leave Certification Preparation

Employees:

• Review and submit any unsubmitted absences for 2025 no later than Jan. 11, 2026.

Supervisors:

• Review and approve or deny all 2025 employee absence requests no later than Jan. 18, 2026.

Departmental Leave Coordinators:

• Refer to the HR Reporting and Analytics article in HRNow. Run the queries listed under the Wolftime – Time and Absence section, review the results and take the appropriate action to resolve any issues.
• You also can find the queries in our public HR queries document.
• Refer to section 3.9 in the table. Resolve 2025 time and leave issues for departmental employees by Jan. 18, 2026.

Step 2: Leave Review and Certification

Employees:

• In January, employees can initiate the 2025 leave certification process after their supervisor approves their outstanding 2025 leave. The deadline to complete this process is Friday, Jan. 23, 2026.
• Review our how-to guide if you need help certifying your leave time.
• If a supervisor denies an employee’s leave certification, the certification process will be canceled, and the employee will receive an email explaining the reason for the cancellation. Employees must work with their supervisor and departmental leave coordinator to make any necessary corrections before resubmitting the certification.

Supervisors:

• Review and approve all your employees’ leave certifications by Friday, Jan. 30, 2026.
• Review our how-to guide if you need help reviewing and approving leave certifications.

Departmental Leave Coordinators:

• Run the NC_WT_NOT_CERTIFIED query to identify employees who have not completed their 2025 leave certification.
• Review the query results to ensure all departmental employees have completed leave certification by Monday, Feb. 2, 2026.
• Leave coordinators do not need to approve employee leave certifications for their units. However, if supervisors cannot approve their employees’ leave certifications for any reason, a leave coordinator can approve employees’ leave certifications with approval from the supervisor.

Important Reminder:

An approved certification indicates that an employee and their supervisor agree that the absences and balances in the WolfTime system for 2025 are accurate. UHR will not permit changes to any 2025 leave requests after the Jan. 30, 2026, leave certification deadline.

If you experience any challenges while preparing for or completing 2025 leave certifications, please complete and submit the WolfTime Inquiry form in HRNow.