Vacation Accural Cap Wording

HR in CA

Hello!

I am looking for wording that places a cap on how much vacation an employee may carry over from year to year. In California a use it or lose it policy violates the law, however we can impose a cap. It basically states that if you carry over more than X amount you will not accrue anymore until your vacation balance is below a certain level. I am struggling with the wording and was hoping someone in the forum had some wording I could use.

Thanks a bunch!

Beckie Caskey

Rockie

Here goes:

An employee may accrue up to a maximum cap of _____ hours in his or her PTO bank. No further leave will accrue until the amount in the PTO bank falls below this cap.

Just curious: Do you require employees to take a certain amount of leave per year and/or do you allow them to cash out any leave as a benefit during the year?

HR in CA

You posed the next question we are pondering. From a business standpoint it might be better to let them cash out any leave that remains at the end of the year. From an HR standpoint I feel employees are given the benefit and they should use it.

Thanks for the wording, it's clear and in English rather than lawyereze!

Beckie Caskey

>Here goes:
>
>An employee may accrue up to a maximum cap of _____ hours in his or
>her PTO bank. No further leave will accrue until the amount in the
>PTO bank falls below this cap.
>
>Just curious: Do you require employees to take a certain amount of
>leave per year and/or do you allow them to cash out any leave as a
>benefit during the year?

HRQ

We also needed to revise our wording to include a cap, so I appreciate this post!

I have a related question: current policy is Exempt employees can cash out up to 20 hours PTO per year, non-exempt staff cannot. Both categories of employees have the exact same PTO benefit other than the cash-out benefit. (Same accrual levels based on seniority, etc.)

Is this OK? (Should I have put this in a separate post?) x:-/

HR in CA

With what information I have I would say that you should be fine. It is acceptable to have different benefits for different levels of employees (exempt VS non-exempt). And at least in my state there are no rules governing vacation and PTO. In California employers are not supposed to dock exempt employees for partial days missed, so this policy makes perfect sense to me.

Beckie

gillian2

You sould stick with vacation, not PTO, unless PTO is what you have. As we in California know, unused vacation must be paid to employees when they leave. If you combine vacation, holidays and sick into a PTO plan the whole thing is treated like vacation and payable upon termination.

NicoleLee

Does anyone from Ohio know if the same thing applies in Ohio as CA concerning the vacation payout? Currently, in order to get a cash out at termination, we require employees to have been employed for 1 year. Is this violating any law?

Thanks for the question, very appropriate right now for me!