First year with unlimited time off nearly complete

[soccerdad72]

When my older son started his first job with a big 4 accounting firm, a coworker didn’t show up for 2 weeks. Instead of firing them, the company sent counselors to try and help them get over their issue and come back to work. Whole different world now.

The industry (Big 4) has changed considerably in recent years. There's such a shortage of CPAs right now that firms will go to much greater length to counsel staff rather than let them go. Much different from, say 10-15 years ago.

 

[disneychrista]

Turns out, giving an employee 2 weeks off per year sends a signal that it is acceptable to take 2 weeks off every year,

Not only a signal that it is okay to take 2 weeks but that it is almost required, especially if it is not carried over. I don’t know how I would get my work done if I took all the paid time off I get. Between sick, vacation and personal it’s totals 37 day per year in addition to the 14 paid holidays.

 

[wvjules]

I work at a B4 and hope we never go to unlimited PTO. Like others in public accounting have said, sure...time off is great (unlimited or otherwise) but there are still deliverables, performance metrics, and other metrics that have to be met so it really isn't unlimited. It was hard to use the 25 days I had, now I have 30. I can't imagine I will ever be able to take 30 days off.

 

[Mrs.AMC]

I've been in my current job for close to 30 years. I get officially 30 days off.
However, I don't track it since when I do take off. I just take off but anytime I'm out of the office I still check emails and respond where I can, and I connect to work each day here and there remotely to keep up with whatever I can. At least half of what I do can be done remotely, some gets put on my desk and has to be handled when I am in the office.
So I guess really, unless I'm physically travelling and unable to connect to my work PC, I rarely take a full day off.
In the end, I can take off and be away from the office as much and as often as I want.
DH is similar. Been at his job for 30 years and ever since Covid shut down, works from home anyway. They permanently closed their physical office and have no plans to bring one back. Which means he can do his work from wherever he is. He doesn't have to be sitting at his desk at home. His work is wherever he is.
It means we can go to Disney/Universal for a week and maybe take 2 days off work.
I've never tracked how many actual days I've been away from work. Only know what I keep up with my work and nothing is behind which is all my bosses care about.

 

[diser_fam]

This is definitely more of a plus for employers than employees. I have a friend that worked for a company that went to this method 4 years ago.

For employees that had been there for years and carried over unused PTO and accumulated the max that company policy would allow (480 hours per year I believe), they lost all of that. It was no longer needed since you now have "unlimited" PTO.

This was a big negative for employees, especially ones that were getting ready to retire. They could have cashed out all of that accumulated, unused PTO when they left the company. Not anymore. This also took a massive liability off of the company's books as they had to account for all of that accumulated PTO.

Sounds great for the employee in theory, but it is also a major plus for the employer.

 

[dez1978]

I work for the state and in many positions where I am, we are so understaffed its hard to grant anyone any vacation days. Based on the years of service you earn either 10, 12 or 14 hours of vacation time per month, plus everyone gets 10 hrs sick leave per month. Then there are now 14 official state holidays and we usually get black friday off as well. The positions that must be staffed 24/7 like corrections officers for example, they do not get the holidys off (paid an additiona 8 hrs of vacation time) they are the ones having a hard time getting time off approved so they have granted them an extension on the "use it or lose it" amount of hours they can have which also varies w/ time in service.

I've been with the state for going on 23 years, so I get 21 days of vacation every year, plus the 14 holidays and 120 hrs of sick time. I can have up to 368 hrs banked at the end of the year. At this point, I finally am getting close enough to that where I have to take 3 weeks off per year to not lose time. So I get more time off than it seems most people with "unlimited PTO" take. I cannot tell you how happy I am to have gotten to this point tho. When I had my youngest 8 years ago, I exhausted all of my sick and annual leave on maternity leave so I came back with nothing and had a baby and a 2 yr old, and I swear one of them was sick every month lol. So it was all I could do to even scrape up enough time to take 3 or 4 days off once a year for vacation. Now my job allows me to flex a bit like working late if I had a morning dr appt and was late and its great. Makes up for the crappy pay.

 

[tvguy]

It isn't really all it is cracked up to be, and as with many changes in workplace benefit, it is generally more favorable to the employer than the employee. They shed the costs of tracking vacation and sick hours and any obligation they had (based on state law or company policy) to pay out for unused hours, and studies show that employees with unlimited PTO take less time off on average than those with a fixed amount of time. Turns out, giving an employee 2 weeks off per year sends a signal that it is acceptable to take 2 weeks off every year, but without the clear signal of how much is okay, people err on the side of working more and vacationing less.

Yeah, my experience is all in California, land of lots of labor laws. I think California requires employers to track Vacation/PTO time because under California law it is considered the same as your salary. Which means you can NEVER lose that time, you have to get those hours off, or be paid for them. A certain amount of sick time has to be given, so I suspect that has to be tracked.
My last employer went to PTO for sick time and vacation time a few years back. We have 64 locations, but only 2 are in California and they delayed the switch by a year trying to find a way to make it "use it or lose it" at all locations. California says you can't do that. Now holiday hours CAN be use it or lose it, because in our industry holidays are not days off, just days off that can be taken at a later date.

 

[sasywtch]

Dez-it sounds like your policies were similar to mine. Not sure what state you are in? State worker for 25 years. I think I had 30 days vacation a year (what it equaled out to, 14 or 15 hours per month? I've been retired for 5 years and probably blocked it out of my mind), 8 hours a sick leave a month, all holidays including the Friday after Thanksgiving and 3 personal holidays (well, 1 plus 2 floating professional days). I think our carry over is 600 hours. However, you still had to put in for vacation time and 2 weeks was pushing it as others wanted time off, work had to get done, etc. But, the last two years that I was there, we had an influx of people working from other countries and they complained and were granted 4-6 weeks off at a time to travel home. It was a pain as we all had to do their work as it couldn't sit there for that long. We had to pull teeth to get 2 weeks in a row. As another person said, they would not fire you for taking your allotted time off but management in the state are experts in finding a way to fire you if they want you gone.

 

[tvguy]

When did this start being a thing?
So, there is NO incentive to earning time off?
I have never heard of it.
Is it related to enticing workers back from the pandemic?

Depends on the employer for sure. Some are more employee friendly than others. In my former industry these days the average employee will only be with the company 2 years and that's just fine with them. They don't want employees to be there 5 years to step up in vacation because that is an expense.
My last company started workers with 10 vacation days. At 5 years you get 15. At 10 years you get 20. At 30 years you get 25. These days those days off go into a PTO pool with your sick hours.

 

[eticketplease]

We track the unlimited PTO and for the most part people do not abuse it. There are a few outliers though, there always are.

Unfortunately for me our company ended after the abuse by people in a different area than ours.

I prefer not to have unlimited as this way I do take a vacation as the time expires at the end of the year and secondly if I was to leave they have to pay the vacation out for what you have accrued. If it is an unlimited plan you technically have not accrued anything so no extra $$ if you decide to leave.

 

[sam_gordon]

Depends on the employer for sure. Some are more employee friendly than others. In my former industry these days the average employee will only be with the company 2 years and that's just fine with them. They don't want employees to be there 5 years to step up in vacation because that is an expense.
My last company started workers with 10 vacation days. At 5 years you get 15. At 10 years you get 20. At 30 years you get 25. These days those days off go into a PTO pool with your sick hours.

Actually in the broadcast industry there's only a small number of companies. You can move stations every two years and still climb up the seniority ladder because they're all owned by the same entity (and therefore seniority travels with you).

 

[disneychrista]

Yeah, my experience is all in California, land of lots of labor laws. I think California requires employers to track Vacation/PTO time because under California law it is considered the same as your salary. Which means you can NEVER lose that time, you have to get those hours off, or be paid for them. A certain amount of sick time has to be given, so I suspect that has to be tracked.
My last employer went to PTO for sick time and vacation time a few years back. We have 64 locations, but only 2 are in California and they delayed the switch by a year trying to find a way to make it "use it or lose it" at all locations. California says you can't do that. Now holiday hours CAN be use it or lose it, because in our industry holidays are not days off, just days off that can be taken at a later date.

There is one exception to the no use it or lose rule. If the employer gives the time up front then it can be lost. For example an employer gives 80 hours PTO or sick on January 1st that time can be lost on December 31st because another 80 hours is given on January 1st.

 

[tvguy]

Actually in the broadcast industry there's only a small number of companies. You can move stations every two years and still climb up the seniority ladder because they're all owned by the same entity (and therefore seniority travels with you).

A few do, but in my experience most are fed up with their current corporations and move to other companies.

 

[tvguy]

There is one exception to the no use it or lose rule. If the employer gives the time up front then it can be lost. For example an employer gives 80 hours PTO or sick on January 1st that time can be lost on December 31st because another 80 hours is given on January 1st.

I'm not sure that is correct in Califonria because my last employer did give us all our PTO on the first, and they were trying to get out of paying it out or having to carry it over and were told they could not. But retired now, so not my issue

 

[sam_gordon]

A few do, but in my experience most are fed up with their current corporations and move to other companies.

Then they'll quickly run out of places to work.

 

[greeneyedchick]

OP, that's impressive! My husband has had unlimited vacation for the past 6 years. Prior to that h got 3 weeks vacation. He usually takes a week off between Christmas-New Year's (we don't go anywhere). And he usually takes a week off in the summer as a stay-cation. He doesn't go on vacation with me or the kids. He will occasionally take a day or two off to move our oldest into the dorm or take a sick day. However, he works long hours and a lot of weekends. He's salaried, so he doesn't get paid for the extra time. At most, I would say my husband take 15 days off a year. I honestly liked it better when he had a set amount of time that he had to take, since it did force him to take some time off. Hopefully, work will lessen in the next few years and we can travel together again.

 

[disneychrista]

I'm not sure that is correct in Califonria because my last employer did give us all our PTO on the first, and they were trying to get out of paying it out or having to carry it over and were told they could not. But retired now, so not my issue

They would still have to payout the portion “earned” between January 1st and date of termination.

 

[tvguy]

They would still have to payout the portion “earned” between January 1st and date of termination.

They have to pay out the entire year's PTO. That is what they did last year when I retired in July. There was some legal reason they front loaded PTO, but I don't know what it was.

 

[tvguy]

Then they'll quickly run out of places to work.

Well it has been difficult to fill positions in TV for about 10 years, and since the pandemic it has been worse. So I doubt that will happen anytime soon, certainly not quickly. I get contacted regularly for jobs even though everything lists me as retire. My daughter gets offers almost as often and still is working in the industry.
Right now the trend with people leaving is for them to go to another station in town for more money. All 4 major stations are owned by large media groups.

 

[Karin1984]

It's getting more common now. In the Netherlands, where I live, 20 vacation days is standard by law, most companies give out 2-5 extra days.
Maybe it's more beneficial for the employer than the employee on paper, but it does something with the feeling of the employee. Like with working from home, it's about trust between employer and employee.

Not every benefit you give will be abused, most people will use it within reason.