How does PTO work at your job?

[rennigade]

As an educator, we didn't get paid vacations.

I would hate that. Basically, teachers have to travel during peak time, when everyone else travels. We tend to avoid traveling during july/august.

[disneysteve]

Sounds to me like you need more staff.

Yes and no. We have 8 locations and need 13 providers on at all times currently. We're open 76 hours/week so that comes to 988 hours of staffing needed weekly. That's about 25 full timers (40 hr/wk) or some combo of FT and PT to fill that need. But we can't over-staff. We can't have extra people on payroll who aren't needed. We do have per diem employees but they are only required to work 8 hrs/mo. When a FT or PT person takes a week off, somebody needs to fill those shifts. They've determined that if they limit PTO to 3 people on any given day, they're generally able to fill the gaps without too much trouble. If they raised the limit to 4 or 5, that might create holes in the schedule that they couldn't fill. They can't force per diems to work. Many of them (as well as many PT folks) have other jobs and responsibilities.

I really don't know what the answer is. It's just something we all struggle with. Almost everyone ends up not using all of their time each year. Thankfully, we get a generous amount of PTO (just over 7 weeks) so if we lose a couple of days worth, it's not a huge deal, but it would be nice not to lose any.

[Mjenn]

Not really the same thing as our sick leave comes from some place separate and doesn't effect our PTO days so you don't need to save them-- but we can only bank 5 days per year and the rest comes out instead as additional pay if we don't take them so you lose time but gain money. We are highly discouraged from doing this as it means you go over budget on salary because you are paying them for more. So I am highly encouraged by HR to make sure my team uses 25 days of PTO and only banks the alloted 5. It is a real boon to bank however. In the last 3.5 years I have banked 4 weeks. And I have gotten about a 20% raise every 1.5 years due to promotion. So my banked ours have gone up a lot in value!

This year if you take of 3 days around Christmas you end up getting about 2 weeks of vacation time with all of the bank holidays, so most people will end up using there hours then. Otherwise we usually solve it by people working 4 day weeks for a few weeks.

[Thrif-t]

We can get paid for up to 40 hours of PTO that we didn't use the year before. We get the extra pay in our second pay of the new year.

I always schedule off between Christmas and New Years. That's my insurance that I don't use all my days before the year is up. If I have to use those days. I take them away from that last week of the year vacation. I don't ever get paid for leftover time, I'd rather be off.

[disneysteve]

We can get paid for up to 40 hours of PTO that we didn't use the year before. We get the extra pay in our second pay of the new year.

I like this system a lot. I’ll bring this up to our director as something to consider.

[JoeP]

Vacation accrues based on our years of service. For example, I get 160 hours PTO per year, so that equates to about 6.1 hours added per pay period (bi-weekly). It carries over and caps at 200 hours.

Float is awarded shortly after our anniversary pay period, and is always 40 hours. Plus, you get back half your unused sick time. We get 40 hours of sick, so if you didn't use any, you could get 60 hours of float. The float balance does not carry over, so we use that first.

[Smallsteps]

It sucks with the use it or lose it mentality some companies have when even if an employee wants to use it ... the time may not be approved for various reasons. busy season/ no coverage etc.

I think some employers changed to use it or lose it for because so vacation hoarders squirreled it away expecting either a big payout if they left or end of year etc.
One company i worked for had drastically changed over the years because of those vacation hoarder people.
ZERO year end payouts ( except if you quit) you needed to use AND actually take time off. I think like Everything there are those who take advantage of something that a company decides to change the rules for all.

The company made a floating personal day expire if not used in xyz time example paid a b-day off within 45 days of birth date .
They quit rolling over items although they had an 18 month window instead of just a year ( heard they rolled that back to just a year after i had left).

I use to see people use PTO Asap and i always thought why not save it in case of ... but then i see those who have to fight to use it before they lose it.

The company I temp at now has vacations for all weeks, we shut the doors from dec24 to jan 2 and other set weeks in the year by looking at their calendar.

I am seeing a bunch of new hires starting i sure hope they told them that in the interview.
Temps ( or new hires) are not paid holidays and depends on agency if you have any pto hours. I hope i don't come back in January to just close out a bunch that left that can't afford a week of no pay.

[disneysteve]

I use to see people use PTO Asap and i always thought why not save it in case of ... but then i see those who have to fight to use it before they lose it.

I like to spread my PTO out throughout the year so that I get a break periodically. We can request PTO up to a year in advance but I almost never know our vacation plans that far out. Right now, I don't have a single vacation plan for 2020 so I haven't requested any time off yet but I'm sure there are plenty of days and weeks that are already booked up by my colleagues who do plan stuff way in advance.

And I always want to save some of my PTO just in case something comes up like personal or family illness or something else unexpected. That's how I end up in November with 40 or 50-some hours left that I have to use or lose.

[kork13]

I already ranted about how the military handles our leave time (save yourself the trouble...short story: generous yet abysmal). But the planning piece strikes a chord... I mentioned above that we try to plan out the broad strokes (rough dates, going where, doing what) of our vacations 6-12 months in advance. That way I can put those plans into our scheduling program and have a shot at actually getting them off. But we're not allowed to actually request the days off until 30 days out, and at that point it's a crap-shoot for whether the time off will be approved or not, depending on ops tempo, unit manning, and so on. The trump card is normally "Well I already bought plane tickets" (though even that fails sometimes), though that screws people staying local, so their leave dates are denied in lieu of the other guy, because the staying-local folks don't have the financial outlay. Yet if I wait to buy tickets until I can actually get the time off approved, ticket prices are up 30%. You really can't win.

More & more, I'm just leaning toward just giving myself frequent long weekends, like 2x 4-day weekends a month, and screw trying to plan 1-2 week long vacations, because those plans never work out anyway. What a joke...
[Yet again...so surly... Clearly I need to talk this through with my leadership, or do something to change/fix the problem...]

[disneysteve]

But we're not allowed to actually request the days off until 30 days out, and at that point it's a crap-shoot for whether the time off will be approved or not

Yet if I wait to buy tickets until I can actually get the time off approved, ticket prices are up 30%. You really can't win.

More & more, I'm just leaning toward just giving myself frequent long weekends, like 2x 4-day weekends a month, and screw trying to plan 1-2 week long vacations,

Only being able to request time 30 days out is nuts. How could anyone possibly plan anything that way? I've got the opposite problem. I get shut out by the people who did plan a year out when I'm "only" planning 2 or 3 months out.

Just this month I did a 5-day "staycation" and love it. I will definitely do more of those. I only need to take off one day (Thursday) for that to happen as I'm off Wednesdays, Fridays, and every other weekend, so it only takes 12 hours of PTO to get 5 days off. I plan to do a few of those in 2020.

[Petunia 100]

Where I work we have caps on vacation and CTO (compensated time off, accrued in lieu of overtime pay if one prefers). Unless you are hitting your cap, the time does not expire. Sick time has no cap and is not lost. Holiday pay is "use it or lose it". We only get 16 hrs per year, so people just use that first for any time off.

[corn18]

Our company just switched to unlimited PTO. You just ask your boss for time off and they are supposed to manage the workforce. We'll see how that goes. I used to accrue more than I took but my company allowed me to sell it back so that worked out great for me. Or it didn't depending on how you look at it.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Our company just switched to unlimited PTO. You just ask your boss for time off and they are supposed to manage the workforce. We'll see how that goes. I used to accrue more than I took but my company allowed me to sell it back so that worked out great for me. Or it didn't depending on how you look at it.

You'll have people take less vacation supposedly. Then you can give bad ratings and fire those who take too much time off. IE say they take 6-8 weeks. When that happens most people get nervous and don't want to take more than what they think other people take. So they end up taking less because they feel pressure to always be working. How can you really work more if you take 8-10 weeks off than someone who takes off 1? Or none? It's really hard unless that person taking no vacation is terrible.

[disneysteve]

Our company just switched to unlimited PTO.

What does that mean exactly? How can you have unlimited PTO? There must be some sort of approval system and limit. You can't walk in and say you'll be back in 6 months.

[srblanco7]

I get 28 days of PTO (new hires start at 4 weeks and with more experience you add days up to a max of 28 days). We accrue over the course of the year, up to a maximum of 200 hours, at which point you stop accruing and are, in essence, sacrificing your PTO without being compensated. We can also roll-over 200 hours to the new year. Upon voluntary of involuntary exit, you get compensated for up to 80 hours of PTO.