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Work vacation policy

Coloradomrg

Coloradomrg

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Another thread triggered this thought. @ttucliffhanger described his company policy, and someone else mentioned it was generous. My thought is that vacation limits are old school, and not needed.

My company did away with limits on "vacation" and "sick" time a few years ago. We now have DTO (discretionary time off) for salaried employees that covers all of it without a cap. Hourly employees still have a limit, but it's 265 hours a year with no roll over. That has something to do with state laws regarding benefits. I don't think anyone has gotten close to running out of time without something crazy happening (illness, other family issues). We find a way to work through that. Want a day off, give 2 days notice. Want a week off, 2 weeks notice, etc. Get your work done, and take your time off. Pretty simple.

We have a ton of paid holidays too. Good Friday, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labory Day, Thanksgiving and the Friday after, Christmas Eve thru Jan 3rd, and your birthday (can be taken any time on or after). Works out to about 130 hours (We work 9 hours M-Th, and 4 on F).

We require that every employee take at least one continuous week off during the year.

As a company we found people take a day or two extra over the year. Nobody is afraid to be sick, or to plan a vacation. If you are taking too much time off, you probably aren't busy enough and that gets looked at and discussed. Nothing heavy handed.

We're not a tiny company, but not a very large one either. We average about 100 people throughout the year across three offices and two states. In our industry, we're considered mid size.

Anyone else seeing this kind of shift? I'll never work for a company that sets limits and makes you "earn" your time off again.
 
Our company used to have a rollover policy. You could roll over 360 PTO hours and after that it was an auto payout for the rest, but now scaled down to only 300 PTO hours can be rolled over. Anything over 300 now is lost. 1 week of personal/sick and 3 floating holidays resets Jan 1 every year.
 
I work for a larger company and I am at 5 weeks vacation each year. I rarely take all my time because of kids and their sports. I work a 9/80 schedule so I get a day off every other friday and at times will bookend a monday to stretch out the weekend if we are really busy.

I think the scenario you described, works best for a small company and less moving parts. Larger companies have too many pieces moving at the same time that the level of coordination needs to be helped out with the system we have.
 
We just went through a bit of a shift ourselves and the option the OP described was on the table. We elected to go to 3 weeks vaca, 1 week of flex time and 1 week of sick time available. So it amounts to 5 total weeks- I lost 2 weeks last year and have vowed to not let it happen again as we only get 16 hours to roll over.
 
Vacation limits are somewhat old school. Only reason they are there is to prevent people from not taking vacation and having a full years of pto when they quit or are fired.

I’ve done unlimited pto my last companies. Eliminates need for any future payouts. People use their pto the same and don’t abuse it.
 
My sisters company was similar. People seemed to work all the time, projects always got done well on schedule, office was casual. Set up a “laptop living room” for March Madness. Oddball “hours” so to speak.

I believe it’s a total buy-in where you would be an absolute idiot not to be at your best for such a benefit.

Too much of the work world has quietly quit, minimum to get by, lowest common denominator, everyone gets a trophy and waits their turn. Ef all that.
 
One of the reasons we changed - there were a bunch of employees who would not take time off just to bank as much time as they could. We would pay out hours over a certain limit (at a reduced rate). Those same people would complain about the lack of time off :ROFLMAO:

Time off needs to be taken...
 
We have limits here but they're pretty generous and we can roll over a LOT of vacation and sick time. Plus the company is really lenient with folks as long as they're getting their work done. When I take time off to volunteer, it almost never comes out of my PTO bank for instance.

I'm fine with a "limit" on my PTO since another perk here is 100% company funded health insurance for my entire family. So I don't look at benefits entirely on their own, they're part of an overall package together.
 
My company still has vacation and sick time. We get 3 weeks of vacation and it looks like 9 days of sick time. I am in a sales role where nobody really keeps track of where I am and what I am doing. I get paid for driving business, travel a lot for work and can work odd hours due to global customers.

I think at my company in the US people are available way more than 40 hours a week and don’t often take a full week of vacation. Our European people are different where it isn’t unusual for people to take 2 contiguous weeks off. I haven’t taken a full week of in several years. Being deal oriented and managing a team things seem to come up that result in me needing to be available.

For the first time in a long time I think all my deals are going to be done before Christmas which will let me take off the week between Christmas and New Years which will be nice.
 
I work for an Instrument of the DoD so we are governed by certain Federal Policies on Vacation and sick leave. I can accumulate as much Sick time as i want and I get 4 hours every 2 weeks. I never loose it, it just grows. I have worked there long enough i get 8 hours Vaca time every two weeks. That is 5.2 weeks a year and I can roll over as much as 240 hours at the end of the year. Once I got to that point, i can take the 5 weeks i get each year and roll 240 hours each year and when i retire, i will take the 240 off before my retirement date as PTO or get paid for it.
 
russtopher said:
We have limits here but they're pretty generous and we can roll over a LOT of vacation and sick time. Plus the company is really lenient with folks as long as they're getting their work done. When I take time off to volunteer, it almost never comes out of my PTO bank for instance.

I'm fine with a "limit" on my PTO since another perk here is 100% company funded health insurance for my entire family. So I don't look at benefits entirely on their own, they're part of an overall package together.
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ooooh that's another good one. When we take time off to volunteer, we get paid 💪
 
My last employer had 80,000 employees and was old school with more vacation accrued the longer you worked for them. It maxed out a 5 weeks with sick time not included in that but they stopped more than a decade ago allowing you to roll it over except in a handful of states where rolling over was the law. I couldn’t afford to take more than a few weeks vacation early in my career but at the end the 5 weeks was easy to take off. Being in outside sales, late in my career it was more like 10 weeks off each year as my boss didn’t care how much time off we took as long as we made our numbers.

In some industries like tech, I think the average worker has longer work days and tend to take their work with them on vacation. It was certainly like that for my wife when she worked for a large tech company.
 
After 22 years I am at "about" 4 weeks of vacation a year. I get 12 holidays and 2 floating holidays. I work at a 24x7 manufacturing site so if I want to work Labor Day I can take that day some other time. Sometimes it is better to work when most of the folks are not there. Also the last few years for the pandemic they have given us 2 mental health days. 🤷‍♂️ I generally leave a few days on the table at the end of the year. I also do have "on-call" weekends where I work and am available for calls. My current job that is about 1 hr of work on these weekends. No biggie. I have not had to justify any time off since like 2005. As long as there is coverage I get any time off I want.

On top of that we have sabbaticals. Every 7 years we get an 8 wk sabbatical. There have been changes to the program since I started and now I have the opportunity to take 4 straight weeks in '24, '25, and '26 along with my normal vacations.

I did manage hourly employees for awhile and the rules around their hours and vacation were a lot more strict but still very generous. That was even working 3 or 4 days a week for 12 hour shifts.

Our parental leave is 12 weeks that can be broken up into 2 different blocks. I have seen people stack parental leave, sabbatical, and vacation to get 24 weeks off at 1 time. The mom's also can add Short Term disability on top of all that.
 
We’re 6 weeks paid vacation, 12 “whatever, whenever” days, and a long list of statutory holidays. I’ve never used it all, but I think that’s the point. I’m thankful I chose a corporate path, as this obviously does not work in a labour industry.
 
We have different tiers of leave. Career service positions accrue annual and sick at 8 hours each a month. After ten years, annual becomes 13 hours a month. You can get an annual leave payout of up to 240 hours lifetime. Sick leave is paid at 25%, but has no limit.

Select Exempt positions get all our leave on upfront our anniversary, 176 hours of annual and 104 hours of sick. SES can carry up to 480 hours of annual, anything over that on your anniversary converts to sick leave. Annual can be paid out up to 480 hours for SES, sick is the same 25% with no limit. I currently have 341 hours of annual and 371 hours of sick. Everyone also gets a personal holiday every year that doesn't roll over. Next year I'll have to start burning annual leave to prevent it from converting to sick. Forcing myself to take time off will be weird.
 
donny475 said:
I work for an Instrument of the DoD so we are governed by certain Federal Policies on Vacation and sick leave. I can accumulate as much Sick time as i want and I get 4 hours every 2 weeks. I never loose it, it just grows. I have worked there long enough i get 8 hours Vaca time every two weeks. That is 5.2 weeks a year and I can roll over as much as 240 hours at the end of the year. Once I got to that point, i can take the 5 weeks i get each year and roll 240 hours each year and when i retire, i will take the 240 off before my retirement date as PTO or get paid for it.
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I'm very, very similar to this..... except I can roll over 320 hours at the end of each year.
 
We got rid of PTO and went to FTO (Flex Time Off)
Wasn't crazy about it the beginning however it's worked out for me.
I have no complaints - Even told the CEO that I liked the change.
Treats the employees like "Adults"
 
My first company had vacation days that you accrue... but you got 5 weeks a year + all holidays + a week off for the 4th and a week off between Christmas and new years... so at least it was a good policy.

Since then everywhere has been untracked. I have never had an issue outside of times of the year I know it would be miserable to try and take off.
 
The increased parental leave that also includes the husband is a good change. When my kids were born there was no paid leave for me and my wife only got 6 weeks. I was back at work just a couple days after my three kids were born.
 
My company has a set PTO limit and I personally prefer that approach. IMO it’s too easy for that “unlimited vacation” to turn into “no vacation”
 
I work for a private company that works with our national health service and I get 6.5 weeks holiday entitlement, along with all bank holidays

Due to the type of work, we need to plan when we want to take time off as our schedule is planned at least 3 months ahead
 
So I technically get 5 weeks with 3 weeks needing to be taken in May when the hall is closed.

However as I'm really the only employee I work way more than my contract. Way more. At the current date after 6 months in my season (June 1st start) I'm owed just over 3 weeks extra vacation.

This isn't me complaining I love what I do and I have a lot of freedom, but being the only one makes it tricky for time off and a lot of extra planning.
 
The worst thing about moving to the US for me was the paid time off, or rather lack of it. I went from 7 weeks in the UK to one bloody week at the first job I took here (fresh off the boat, so took any job as soon as I had my authority to work just to get some money coming in). Current employer gives me 3 weeks plus the federal holidays. PTO generally seems pretty dire here though.
 
For people 0-9 years we accrue 120 hours a year (10 hours on the 1st of each month). The longer your tenure, the number increases. We also accrue roughly 0.5 hours of sick leave for every 40 hours worked.

Our company used to have a limit of 360 hours. Sometime last year they began cutting the limit to 160, this year is 120, and eventually it will be 80 hours max in 2025, with no rollover (use it or lose it). They claimed it was to encourage people to take more time off for their "mental health." To me it feels like people are punished for showing up to work every day. Feel bad for people that travel overseas or go on a cruise. If you're gone for two weeks, your entire vacation for the year will be depleted since we're no longer allowed to carry extra.
 
There’s a big financial benefit for companies that switch to an unlimited policy. Saves a lot of money by avoiding to payout when people leave. Companies will say it’s to give employees more flexibility when in reality they are looking at the savings.
 
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