Untracked time off. Salaried? Do you have this?

Its more accounting trick than anything else. Now they don't have to track and pay for PTO when people leave, which makes the books easier I think, and they get the side benefit of automatically guilting people into taking less vacation.

I'd probably just give myself 6-8 weeks a year and track it on a spreadsheet, see when they start whining.

 

I've been with this company for 22 years, so I have maxed out how much PTO I can get, which is pretty generous. I basically get about 30 days PTO a year. One of the best things about my job is I work from home and are pretty much left alone to do my work. As long as it gets done and I do a good job. Which I do. So if I need to run errands, go to the doctor, etc., I just do it.

Downside - Earning more PTO the longer you work for a company is a benefit/reward. With this new policy it kind of washes that away.

 

The mindset of long term employees earning a pension and retiring from the local factory is largely being replaced by the younger generation(s) who hop around looking for a better location, telework options, transferable skills, etc. I’m old school, retired from the military and the government plus am vested in another pension. I like that my sick & annual leave are credited to longevity because my future is based on longevity X a percentage X salary. If it was based on matching contributions then there isn’t much point to accumulating leave when realistically there is only so much you can use and still add value so as to not get let go.

I can definitely see untracked leave as a way to attract and retain employees. I guess for people like me and probably 916carl it seems like giving up something but for younger people it would seem more like getting something. I would have loved it when kids were home and I wasn’t earning much leave.

 

I'm a bit skeptical about it being truly "unlimited PTO", I would be certain that someone is tracking who is working and who is enjoying a day off. My last company was a more traditional accrued system with a roll-over for vacay and sick time. You could carry up to 80hrs of vacay time plus whatever you earned during the year, but whatever extra you didn't use during the year became a use-it-or-loss-it scenario. Sick time would get 'deep banked' but during the annual reviews, the first thing they always brought up was how much of your PTO that you used during the prior year.

My new employer, it's odd. Probably has much to do with it being a very small company but in my 1st full calendar year I will accrue 40hrs of PTO, which covers sick and personal time. It's a use-it-or-lose-it system. Being salary gives me a bit of 'flex time' in which I can miss time then make it up over the next pay cycle. I started in July, so I get a prorated portion of about 3 days of PTO this year. I was told that there is no official time tracker, so it's based on honesty. I have found out since then from the IT guy that they track everyone by log-in times on your laptop.

 

I've heard the same, that unlimited/untracked PTO gets used less than when it is accrued. I'm in a similar situation, although there were parts of my organization that were already on unlimited PTO -- they just expanded it to cover salaried people in all locations. They still have better health benefits in other locations, supposedly to remain competitive in those markets. Basically, due to my location, I have felt like me and my local peers are kind of getting the shaft. I do have to say that even though I have been under an accrued policy, tracking was never integrated into the payroll system and was only manually tracked by the employee and their manager and not really enforced. Either way, your manager was entrusted with determining whether you were abusing the system or not. I've been here 5 years and have never tracked my PTO.

Whether it is for our benefit or not remains a valid question. It's more likely that they don't have to build systems and processes around an accrued plan to enforce it, and it may improve morale for some folks (it certainly won't hurt morale), and they don't have to deal with LOA exception processes as much. There are certain state laws that have to be adhered to, though.

 

Sounds alot like its going to cost the company much less in PTO payouts/resources/systems/etc. With a no track system in place (whether tracked or not), there will no longer be a culture of use it or lose it; you'll just continue coming to work, and they'll never have to pay you out for all the days you already never took to begin with. Obviously, there will be no "standard" for how much is too much, but who is really going to be the one to find out? It seems like the idea would be to create a culture of a workspace where employees only take the time that they need, as often as they need, and likely not take advantage of "too much" extra time off. I think a majority of people feel like 1 week long vacation per year, plus normal sick time off, is "fair" and is normally all they take, while accruing so much more. Now those average people don't have to be paid out. Thats my take on it at least. I wouldn't fear people taking advantage of it, because if they take so much time that their performance suffers, they'll just be fired, and be the company example of the person who took "too much" untracked time off.

 

I work for a huge corporation and we salaried folks don't have tracked time off from a "leave and earnings statement" perspective. We track it "on our honor" and some bosses track it for their employees.

Downside is if your company pays out vacation time at end of year/severance/etc, you lose out on that. Upside is it *can* make grey areas like comp days, half days, having to show up to the office on a Saturday for a urgent ask so you take a haircut on the following Friday, etc much easier.

The REAL reason companies do this is from an accounting perspective. We have to keep a running accrual on the balance sheet for the amount of time each employee with tracked time has remaining at their wage rate. Its a massive pain and adds complexity to payroll and accounting sure, but financially it ties up a TON of cash that can be spent on business expenses, growth, and so on. With times being a little tighter than the last few years, companies are trying to free up cash and not have to borrow at higher interest rates.

Your corporate culture will dictate what gets deemed acceptable vs not, and I've worked at places that did track vacation that still sort of "vacation-shamed" folks.

 

Seems like not only is this a savings to the company, they also get to leverage human nature. Once the vacation allotment is taken away, the burden of taking the time off and feeling ok about it is all put back on the employee.

 

Thats what I was thinking, too. And they can lay on the guilt (or repercussions) if you do take time off because you can't say you're using your allotted time anymore.

On paper it seems like a good thing but it could be quite the opposite. Really it comes down to your company and how they treat employees. I could see it going either way, depending.

 

We just got this too.

I will add that they increase maternity leave too in addition to what they are calling Personal Time Off. I have yet to see the nitty gritty policy, and I believe it will start Jan 1. They will have to clear the books, then lay off affected accounting staff in Poland, or US and move tasks to Poland.

The move is consistent with a massive shift in company culture (for the better) since we were merged into a new company in 2019.

 

P.S. I appreciate all your perspectives as we try to come to terms with what this means and follow the money, so to speak. The corporate financial burden totally makes sense, especially when having to specialize in 50 state-specific policies, let alone international entities.

 

Damn, thats nuts

 

These are two very big reasons.

 

oh yeah, whenever you think a company is doing you some major favor you’d better sit back and think about how it’s really affecting you. And if you want the truth, talk to someone in the finance or HR department because that’s who runs 99% of every company.

 

My situation is similar, but in the opposite order.

My first professional job in my IT field, I worked for Intel (the big chip maker) at their Folsom location. I was there from 1992 - 2010 when I got laid off. During my years there, their policy was always untracked vacation. You "got about" X number of weeks vacation per year. 0 - 7 years of service = about 3 weeks vacation; 7+ years service = about 4 weeks. Sick time was same - untracked. It was entirely between you and your manager. If you ended up needing a couple extra days in one year, if your manager was good with it, you were good to go. No one tracked anything formally, no formal request for time off, etc.. After I got laid off, I next worked for Bank of America, and a couple other companies since then. In every other company I have worked for other than Intel, time off and sick time are formally tracked, requested, etc., and you got an exact amount of both.

One of the benefits for me with Intel's policies, and this is obviously a very special case... in 2007 I had a spinal injury and was in the hospital (UC Davis Med Center) for 35 days. My manager never even told HR. He basically said "Depending on how long you are out of work, I may eventually need to, so they can put you on long term disability if it comes to that", but it never did.

Personally, I loved the informal untracked way of things. However, if your manager is an asshole, and they decide to deny you taking vacation, you may be up shit creek and have no HR support. Oh, and the other thing about Intel's policy, since you didn't track vacation, you didn't accrue it at X hours per pay period. January 1 of each year, you had your full annual number of vacation days available to use immediately. So, for example, once you had 7 years service, and got "about 4 weeks" vacation each year, you could take the entire month of January as vacation every year - if your manager approved it. You didn't have to wait for 6 months until you had accrued enough to take a week off for example.

One other thing I can address - Yes, CA state labor laws quantify anything earned/accrued (wages, time off,...) as earned by the employee, and the employer is required by law to "give you what you have earned", which means that once you earn a day off, they must either allow you to take that day off, or pay you a full day's normal wages for that day of vacation. Regardless of your employer's own internal policies, this applies to all employees who either live, or work in CA. Once I moved to Kentucky a couple months ago, I wasn't sure about the rule here, so I contacted my HR department and asked. Their response to me was "CA is the only State that allows roll over of unused vacation to the next year". So, if they are correct, no other state requires an employer to allow you to roll over vacation. Any given employer can allow whatever they want, but it seems CA is the only state that requires this by law.