If you’re running a health or dental practice in Connecticut and you’re not currently offering paid sick leave to your employees, that’s about to change. What used to apply only to larger employers will now affect almost every practice in the state. Connecticut is implementing a phased rollout for paid sick leave laws. This comes at the same time as another increase to minimum wage. Here’s how to stay compliant with the new laws that matter to your practice.
What to Know About New Connecticut Paid Sick Leave Laws
Connecticut significantly expanded its paid sick leave law and has moved away from the old model. Previously, Connecticut’s sick leave law covered only certain types of service workers and certain employers. The new law is so broad that it’s almost universal.
The phased sick leave law rollout is based on employee count:
- January 2025: Employers with 25 or more employees
- January 2026: Employers with 11 or more employees
- January 2027: Employers with one or more employees
For many health and dental practices, 2026 is the year the law becomes real. You might not have been required to offer paid sick leave in the past. But by the beginning of next year, even if you have a solo practice with just one employee, sick leave will be mandatory.
How Much Paid Sick Leave is Required?
Under the new Connecticut paid sick leave law, employees will accrue one hour of leave for every 30 hours worked, up to 40 hours per year. That’s the requirement, so you could offer more if you choose. Employees can begin using their sick leave after 120 days of employment.
Besides being legally required, offering sick leave is a great move for your practice. There’s no question that employees who take much-needed time off are more productive and happier in their workplace. Also, patients aren’t usually very eager for someone with the sniffles to provide their medical or dental treatment.
What’s the Difference Between Sick Leave and PTO?
Sick leave is time set aside to recover from an illness or injury, take care of sick family members, or attend medical appointments. PTO is paid time off used for every other reason (or no reason at all).
Paid sick leave under Connecticut law is a mandatory benefit. It’s protected. Employees must be allowed to use it for qualifying reasons, and you cannot retaliate or discipline employees for lawful use. To streamline this process, some practices use a combined PTO bank. This bank takes care of both the sick leave accrual rate and usage protections required by law. That can work, but only if your policy clearly meets or exceeds the requirements.
Updates to Connecticut’s Minimum Wage
Like in many states, Connecticut has updated its minimum wage again. Effective January 1, 2026, the minimum wage in Connecticut increased from $16.35 per hour to $16.94 per hour. This is part of an annual inflation adjustment required by the state statute.
Healthcare isn’t normally a tipping industry, but just for your reference, the maximum tip credit also increased from $9.97 to $10.56 for service employees and from $8.12 to $8.71 for bartenders.
It’s worth noting that the dollar amounts they chose are not “guesstimates.” Connecticut minimum wage is measured against the percentage change in the US Department of Labor Employment Cost Index for wages and salaries for all civilian workers from June 30, 2024, through June 30, 2025, rounded to the nearest cent.
With that in mind, you can safely assume that this is not the last minimum wage update the state has planned. Don’t worry if you’re close to the line. HR for Health will send you automatic updates about relevant law changes so you can update compensation on time.
HR for Health Keeps You Compliant
This phased rollout will apply to practically all Connecticut employers (including smaller health and dental practices). If you’re still under that 11 employee threshold, you have a little time to implement your paid sick leave policy. Get in touch with HR for Health’s on-demand HR experts. We’ll show you how to create compliant policies and roll them out right.
