Service Credit and Service Pin Awards
Learn About Service Credits and how to request a Service Pin Award
Service credit refers to an employee's length of service with the University of California, California State Universities, Department of Energy Laboratories and other State of California Agencies.
There are three types of service credits:
- Service credit for retirement purposes,
- Service credit or seniority points for layoff purposes, and
- Service credit for vacation leave accrual and for purposes of awarding service pins.
Request Service Pin (Updated and Streamlined Process)
Departments should request service awards for eligible employee's 8-10 weeks prior to the service anniversary date, to allow for order processing and shipping time. There is no cost to the department or employee for the service credit award program.
Please note that the vendor requires shipping addresses for pins and gifts must be the same. In order to ensure delivery and receipt of pins, and of service award gifts (for milestones 25-50) ̶̶ in a combination of in-person, hybrid and remote work environments ̶̶ we require the home address and telephone number, within the US, of the employee being acknowledged. This information will remain confidential between the Employee Programs and Recognition team in Campus HR and the pin/gift vendor, and will not be shared outside of this authorized use.
To request a Service Pin, complete the UC San Diego Service Pin Request Form.
Departments may also recognize a service milestone following the Employee Non-Cash Gifts and Awards guidance, in addition to the HR-sponsored service milestone recognition.
Service Pin Award Eligibility
Staff employees are eligible for service awards when they have achieved 10 or more years of service, at 5-year intervals (10, 15, 20, etc.):
-
- 10, 15 and 20 years - UC seal lapel pin
- 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50 years - UC seal lapel pin and award gift
Participating VC areas:
- Chancellor's Office
- VC Academic Affairs
- VC Advancement
- VC Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
- VC Marine Sciences
- VC Research
- VC Resource Management and Planning
- VC Student Affairs
- VC Chief Financial Officer
Managing Service Credits
UC Path will auto-generate an employee’s newly achieved Service Credit Milestone which is triggered by the employees' Job Code. Their Leave & Sick Accrual will also be updated automatically in UC Path once the system has updated their milestone.
UCPath does not alert the employee and/or Department HR Contact when this milestone is met. Departments are encouraged to still track employee service credit locally for the time being.
Transfer of Service Credits:
- If an employee has prior Service Credit from a previous Institution and/or State Agency that UC San Diego honors, the employee/HR Contact will submit a ticket in UCPath to request the credit update.
- Pre-UCPath UC/State Agency Service Credit that did not transfer correctly during UCPath conversion, the HR contact can submit an inquiry to records@ucsd.edu to find out what is available on file can be provided to be submitted via UCPath. Once submitted, UCPath will then update milestone/sick & leave accruals.
- If there is a discrepancy in an employee’s Leave Accruals, the HR Contact will submit a ticket to UCPath to resolve the discrepancy.
Past Service Pin Resources (Pre UCPath)
The below resources are no longer a part of the Service Award process. These tools can be used when looking into service credit that occurred prior to the transition to UC Path.
- Service Credit Procedures (PDF)
- Run Service Credit Query and submit Service Credit Calculation and form through EmployeeLink (under Employee Easy Queries)
- Please note: The Query uses PPS data only. Please refer to UC Path for current Milestones reached as the calculator only goes up to May 2020 when running the form.
The information on this page relates to service credit calculations for vacation leave accrual and for service awards.
- For retirement service credit information, contact Benefits at 858-534-2816 or benefits@ucsd.edu.
- For seniority point information, contact the Employee Relations, Policy Development and Work/Life at 858-534-4115 or employeerelations@ucsd.edu.
- UC San Diego Health Sciences and UC San Diego Health employees can find out more information about the Health Sciences Human Resources program.