First year with unlimited time off nearly complete

[barkley]

My DH gets good vacation time right now, something like 29 days a year (plus 10 holidays). He rarely uses all those days, so while he can carry over the time to the next year, eventually it starts to add up and they will buy the time back from him. So he has lots of time off to vacation but if he doesn’t use it all, eventually he gets paid for that earned time - like a little bonus.

i had co-workers who would 'self bonus' as well. a person (depending on their job classification) could be earning up to 6 weeks of vacation, 3 floating holidays, 50 hours of 'management time off' and 15 sick days. people could cash out up to 1 year's vacation accruals per year so people routinely waited until salaries increased and then did their 'self bonus'.


i have to wonder w/this unlimited concept-how would that work with short term disabilities and fmla. fmla is limited to 12 weeks per year so does this mean an employer offering the unlimited time off is not going to use that limitation b/c i suspect if they tried to w/this policy they could end up with an employment discrimination lawsuit. along the same line-do these employers not offer any kind of short or long term disability insurance for employees that kicks in after so many days b/c again, if they try to terminate someone who is taking 'unlimited paid time off' due to a disability it seems ripe for a discrimination lawsuit.

 

[nancipants]

I also just finished a year at my new job. In my previous position, I was earning 15 vacation days (10 of which could roll over), 3 floating holidays (no roll over), and 10 sick days per year (all those roll over). I had been there 11 years when I left. I accrued a LOT of sick time and used 8 weeks for my maternity leave (combined with 4 weeks of vacation time), which was nice. (Not nice that it wasn't paid automatically, but alas, that's another discussion.)

As nice as it was to accrue that paid time off and get an additional small payout when I left, I much prefer the unlimited PTO situation. I can take a long vacation or several shorter ones and not need to worry about going over alloted time, or working extra hours to get comp time. It's also much more convenient for sick time, which I unfortunately use a lot of with a toddler. I also feel like my job respects me more; I can take whatever time off I want as long as I'm getting my work done.

For those who ask what stops me from taking time off all the time, well, my work won't get done when I'm gone! We have different assignments, and I can ask for people to cover me while I'm gone, but I wouldn't be able to make a habit of it. Our policy also requires us to submit our PTO for approval within a certain amount of time.