How does PTO work at your job?

[disneysteve]

We have an issue with PTO where I work and I'm curious how it is handled at other places.

We get a certain number of hours of PTO each year. Those hours must be used by 12/31 or we lose them. We can't bank them or roll them over. We can't sell them back. It's use it or lose it.

The problem is it is nearly impossible to actually use all of your PTO hours. Last year, I think I lost 21 hours. Right now, I think I'm at 28 hours that I may potentially lose. That's nearly a week of vacation time forfeited.

Nobody ever wants to totally use up their PTO too early in the year. We save some time just in case we need it. We also save it for unexpected stuff, sick days, family emergencies, whatever. Then before we know it, it's late October and we've still got a week's worth of PTO hours available but there's no time in the schedule to actually take it.

Our policy is that only 3 people can be off at any given time to ensure coverage at all sites. We can take off even if 3 are already scheduled for PTO if we can line up coverage for our shift. I actually did that the other day for a couple of days in December just to use up some of my remaining PTO hours but I still have hours left.

How do other employers handle this? Can you actually take every hour you have coming to you? Or do you run into the same problem where the end of year is approaching and a bunch of people are suddenly trying to use up PTO hours?

[greenskeeper]

PTO earning is based on years with the company. I max out per year at 28 days (once that is met you don't earn anymore....we all make sure that never happens)....basically I earn about 1 day of PTO every payday (biweekly). PTO hours carry over each year and I can buy up to 1 week for cash. Same deal with a limit to 3 department employees off per day.

[disneysteve]

PTO earning is based on years with the company. I max out per year at 28 days (once that is met you don't earn anymore....we all make sure that never happens)....basically I earn about 1 day of PTO every payday (biweekly). PTO hours carry over each year and I can buy up to 1 week for cash.

We don't "earn" PTO. It's contracted. Full time (40 hours) gets 288 hours (7.2 weeks). If you work less than 40 hours (I'm 36 hours) your PTO is prorated accordingly. We can't carry it over.

Do you ever have trouble actually using your time? Do you find yourself having to just take random days off for no reason other than to use up your time?

[MooseBucks]

4 weeks of vacation, 2 weeks of sick time & 10 Holidays off. I typically will use all of my vacation and minimal on the sick time. Sick time is usually just used for when I need to stay home with kids. If I'm sick I'll work from home. We can carry over sick time but not vacation. I'd love to be able to carry over even a portion of my vacation time.

[rennigade]

At my previous employer, we were given 10 sick days per year, which could not carry over and expired at the end of the year. I always used just about all of them, whether I was sick or not. I know others just let them expire/lost them. Our vacation could be carried over so that was never an issue.

At my new job, all of our time can carry over, so no one ever seems to have a problem using time. There are some who never take vacations but will take a week off if they're about to max their time, at which point no more could be accumulated.

DS...thats a lot of a time to use up in a year. You can probably get a feel for how much time you're going to take throughout the year with your scheduled vacations, week or two to disney, other random days/weeks in advance. I would determine that, then spread out the PTO evenly over the months. You're only looking at losing a couple days so you were able to use up most of them. That would be tough though.

[kork13]

I'm in the military, which notionally has a very generous leave/"PTO" policy -- we get 30 days per year (2.5 days per month), and we can carry over 60 days (resetting every year 1 Oct). However, using that much time off with the ops tempo that many units have to sustain is often impossible. That also plays into the limits others are mentioning -- I can't leave my office empty, so if everyone else in my office is TDY or on leave or flying a mission, or whatever else...That means I can't take leave. All of this results in massive numbers of people trying to burn the rest of their use-lose leave in September. And as the senior guy in the office, I refuse to deny someone else's leave so that I can take leave myself.

Normally, we plan out the rough usage of my time off at the beginning of each year based on the big trips we want to do, then I'll sprinkle in a few extra days off randomly to plan some 3-4 day weekends for myself. I always maintain no less than 15 days of leave as "emergency use" and otherwise try to use my time off regularly to stay around 40-45 days of leave balance. And then...military life happens.

This year was a personal (worst) record -- I lost 21 days of leave this year. Last year I lost 8 days. Since last October, I've been on TDY (a.k.a. "business trips") for over 6 months total, the last 4 months of which were almost continuous (except for 2x 1-week periods in June & July). My family had plans for multiple camping trips & vacations to the lower-48, most of which were planned between May & September. All but one was scrapped entirely due to me being gone so much. I also had 2 separate weeks of planned leave that I was called back from due to "operational necessity" in support of NORAD. Last October, I had plans to end up with around 35-40 days of total carryover. Instead, I ended up with 81 days, losing 21. woohoo.

When I get home in March after this deployment (during which I'm not allowed to take leave), we're going to be moving to Idaho. As soon as I can get us on the road, we're going to take it slow & easy, and see but what I can't burn a month of leave all at once with my family...drive/camp the ALCAN highway, hit Disneyland, national parks, family, and all the rest. We're gonna need it, because after being so scarce over the last 6 months already (not to mention the coming 4 months), I'm gonna have to hope that I'm still welcome in the house & my sons still recognize me.

[wow, that turned out alot more cynical than I intended....it's been a rough year...]

[disneysteve]

DS...thats a lot of a time to use up in a year. You can probably get a feel for how much time you're going to take throughout the year with your scheduled vacations, week or two to disney, other random days/weeks in advance. I would determine that, then spread out the PTO evenly over the months. You're only looking at losing a couple days so you were able to use up most of them. That would be tough though.

Part of the problem is we just aren't generally the type to plan vacations far in advance. I have absolutely no idea what vacations we will be taking in 2020. I know my wife and daughter are going to Chicago in June for a convention but right now, I don't even know if I'm going with them. I don't want to need to decide that stuff 8-10 months ahead of time. At my previous jobs, I never had to, but now I do. The same for attending medical conferences. There are a couple that I might like to go to next year but for at least one of them, it's already too late for me to do so because some of my coworkers claimed those dates 4 months ago.

It is far more difficult than it ought to be to actually use all of my vacation time. That's why I was wondering how other jobs handled it. There must be a better way.

It is true that I'm going to end up only losing probably 28 hours out of 259 so that's not so bad. Still, that's 28 hours that I've worked that I could have been out doing something fun and still getting paid. I may still find a couple more shifts to take off before the end of the year.

[disneysteve]

I dug through the schedule and found 2 more days I can take off in December (12 hours and 4 hours) so I'm down to 12 extra hours. If that's all I lose, that's not all that bad, but it's still kind of annoying.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I get none. My DH gets 20 days and it's not enough. LOL. Terrible thing to think that. We'd take less money for more time off. He doesn't have any problems. He puts in and leaves. We make plans pretty much all the time. This year we changed our plans rapidly. We did an alaskan cruise for a week, disney for a week, week in visiting in laws, week broken apart for weekend skip trips, and a couple of days here and there. It's hard to try to preserve our hours. DH gets I think up to 20 days a year rollover I'll ask him tonight.

Last job he got a lot more like 20 days a year, week between christmas and new years, 4 floaters, plus 11 holidays. The problem? Use or lose and trying to save it till end of year just in case we'd save 5 days after we planned all trips and then having to burn 5 days

[disneysteve]

The problem? Use or lose and trying to save it till end of year just in case we'd save 5 days after we planned all trips and then having to burn 5 days

Exactly. You don't want to waste it but you don't want to schedule it all in advance and then get sick or have a funeral to attend or otherwise need a couple of days off and have no time left.

[Jluke]

Sounds like some changes are need at urgent care. Understaffed? Probably not but that makes it harder to schedule time off

I would request that you be allowed to carry over (for example 16 hours) BUT you must use that in the first quarter of the new year. For those specific reasons you mention: sick, last minute plans, etc.

That’s similar to how my employer handles any carry over time. I think we can do 4-5 days of carryover.

not to mention “unlimited “ sick and “unlimited” personal time

[bjl584]

I can thankfully sell back up to 5 days and roll over an additional 5, so this issue hasn't come up in my case.

[disneysteve]

I would request that you be allowed to carry over (for example 16 hours) BUT you must use that in the first quarter of the new year.

That would never work in our case. First quarter is the busiest time of the year. The last thing they want is more providers taking time off. Plus, we would still have the 3 person limit. They can give us all the PTO hours they want but there needs to be enough hours in the schedule for us to take them and still have the sites fully staffed.

I'd much rather be able to sell back unused time. Hourly employees can do that but professional staff can't.

[rob62521]

As an educator, we didn't get paid vacations. We did have sick days that carried over and we were given a personal day each year. If you didn't use the personal day, it carried over the second year and you could use the personal days together as long as it wasn't near a holiday or so many days at the beginning of the year or at the end of the year. If you didn't use the personal day, by the third year, it became a sick day. Although we received paychecks over Christmas break, it was just the same yearly salary broken down into so many pay periods. I had over a year's worth of sick days when I retired and it added a year for pension benefits. I knew it was a true blessing.

[riverwed070707]

Part of the problem is we just aren't generally the type to plan vacations far in advance. I have absolutely no idea what vacations we will be taking in 2020. I know my wife and daughter are going to Chicago in June for a convention but right now, I don't even know if I'm going with them. I don't want to need to decide that stuff 8-10 months ahead of time. At my previous jobs, I never had to, but now I do. The same for attending medical conferences. There are a couple that I might like to go to next year but for at least one of them, it's already too late for me to do so because some of my coworkers claimed those dates 4 months ago.

It is far more difficult than it ought to be to actually use all of my vacation time. That's why I was wondering how other jobs handled it. There must be a better way.

It is true that I'm going to end up only losing probably 28 hours out of 259 so that's not so bad. Still, that's 28 hours that I've worked that I could have been out doing something fun and still getting paid. I may still find a couple more shifts to take off before the end of the year.

Sounds to me like you need more staff. I tend to prefer the accumulate/rollover method (that's what my company does) because of the flexibility, but if your company is going to have a firm X is what you get Jan. 1 and you lose it Dec. 31, they need to be able to accommodate peoples requests when they make them even if its a week or two ahead of time. There's no benefit in PTO if you have to go through so many hoops to use it.

I work pretty independently so I don't need anyone's approval to take time off as long as my work gets done. I forget what the limits are but I earn something like 16 hours a month and can accrue up to 289 hours? Plus we get 2 floaters and 8 holidays. Vacation and sick time are combined. I don't ever have trouble using my time but I certainly never take my balance down to 0... I get anxious if it drops below 80

ETA I looked it up and I was way off on my estimates. Apparently, I don't even know what I accrue lol. I've been here 12 years, will be jumping up to the next bracket in May.

Years of Service	Annual PTO Hours	PTO Hours Accrued/Pay Period	Maximum Hours
0-4	144	5.54	216
5-12	184	7.08	276
13-23	224	8.62	336
24 or more*	264	10.15	396