PTO

Neferlaw · October 2002

My firm has a very generous leave policy. Currently, we can accrue up to 90 days of sick leave (to carry people to disability) and we accrue up to two and one-half days per month of annual leave and it carries over each year. Our people are very dedicated and most don't use the leave, so many people have accumulated substantial amounts of leave (one employee has over 100 days!). I would like to switch to PTO and allow employees to use it for any purpose. I don't want to take away already accrued leave, but would like to cap it somewhere without people screaming about taking "benefits" away. In light of our generous policy, do any of you have any ideas about the best way I can find a cap? We don't pay our people much (non-profit in a tough financial condition) so employees see leave as an important benefit. I appreciate your thoughts.

NaeNae55 · October 2002

At one company I worked (before I was in HR) this is how they handled it. They set a cap and combined everything under the cap into the PTO bank. Then they took everything over the cap and put it into a bank called Extended Sick Leave. Loyal employees who had many days of sick saved were not hurt by this effort. The ESL was there if they got really sick. There were rules about how many days off you needed, etc, before the EE could access the ESL bank, but since all employees knew they could get to it if necessary, the feeling of losing out wasn't too bad. Of course, most employees hate these kinds of changes, but the plan wasn't met with too much flak and seemed to be a success. After about 5 years when only 1 person had accessed the ESL bank, they took steps to discontinue it.

Another option looked at was to just start fresh on everyone with PTO. The idea was to have 3 banks (PTO, Vacation, and Sick) and keep them up. When employees accrued time after the cutoff date, it would go into the PTO bank. When employees used time, it would be taken from the Vacation or Sick bank, whichever was appropriate, until they were empty, then the PTO bank would be accessed. This was too much trouble, however, and they went for the above option instead.

The tricky part was deciding on a reasonable cap for the changeover, and a reasonable cap for total PTO an employee could accrue.

Good luck!

Neferlaw · October 2002

Thank you for your reply. Under the plan you described, if employees have leave that would allow them time off beyond the 12 weeks of FMLA, were they allowed to continue on leave, but with the understanding that their job may not be held, or how did it work?

Terri B · October 2002

My company did the transistion from the traditional vacation, sick, personal system to PTO also. We set a date for the change over and everything accrued from that pay period on went into the PTO bank. Vacation and personal time were converted one for one to PTO. The sick banks were frozen. EEs were told that any time they called in sick or used FMLA the time would be pulled from the sick bank until it was empty. PTO works best with a no fault attendance policy. Meaning, if the day was unscheduled (in advance) it counts against you on the attendance matrix. The reason is not important. We have a leave policy that is seperate from FMLA. If they use up their 12 weeks they have to request leave under the LOA policy and it is at our discretion whether to grant it or not. The fact that they have time available to use (sick or PTO) has nothing to do with the approval. We do not have a cap on PTO. We do allow PTO conversion and donations.

Good luck. I have worked under both systems and I like the PTO system much better from an admisitration standpoint.

NaeNae55 · October 2002

The company always held the view that time accrued was time available. If an employee had the time available and the supervisor's approval then it didn't matter how long the employee was gone. Unless the supervisor could prove that the job couldn't be covered without breaking someone's back, the time was approved. The company was always very supportive of its employees and was therefore willing to hire temps or whatever was needed to help an employee through a difficult time. As you might imagine, we had some very loyal employees. Of course, we also had some who thought those things were entitlements too. Somehow, those employees always got weeded out eventually.

PTO

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