What is PTO Honor System?

[noodleoo]

A company I'm interviewing at has a very interesting PTO system. They call it an honor system, which means you don't accrue PTO and you aren't given a set amount. I don't really understand how it works and the HR guy mentioned it on my preliminary screening interview, so obviously I didn't want to ask too many questions. He said that generally employees take between 3 and 5 weeks. Some employees take longer leave to visit family overseas, etc. it seems like as long as your supervisor approves it, you can take it.

I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand, it sounds good because I have 4 weeks now, I'd hate to go down to 2 because I start at a new company. But the downside is scary: what if they never approve vacation time and I end up not being able to take much, if any? What if we want to plan a long vacation and they won't let us take 2 weeks off? And how would it work for maternity leave, you don't accrue any sick time or vacation time? They do have STD and >50 employees, so they have to grant FMLA (right?). The negative he mentioned is that they obviously don't pay it out if you leave since they don't accrue/track it.

Has anyone ever heard of this before? I'm liking the company, but this really scares me.

[SJ]

That is how we do it here. A lot of "younger" companies & start-ups use it too (Groupon, Gilt Groupe, etc.)

It's basically the honor system. They expect their employees to work hard and to be reasonable with their requests and time off. I think there is a lot of room for system abuse, but I have generally been happy with it.

This year I have taken less than 10 days off, but other years I have taken 20 or more. It is nice not to count or keep track, but there is some internal questioning of "am I pushing the line?" or "how much is too much?" etc.

[noodleoo]

Okay, glad to hear it isn't something too unusual. Do you every worry that they will deny you vacation out right?

[mellie35]

This is how it works at my husband's company. I think it has worked for us. Whenever he has wanted to take time off, he is allowed to do so. He just gives them adequate notice and they never say no. I would say he usually takes about three weeks off and it has never been a problem.

[explorer2001]

This makes me feel like they aren't doing something above board and they will take advantage of you. My prior job was that way. Theoretically you could take PTO, but they made it hell to do so and refused to pay anything out upon departure. There were constant veiled threats and pressure not to use PTO. Like when I took a whole day off for court with my divorce and they tried to make me come inspiteof court documents.

This might not be the case for you, but be careful.

[SJ]

Dec 5, 2012 14:15:32 GMT -5 noodleoo said:

Okay, glad to hear it isn't something too unusual. Do you every worry that they will deny you vacation out right?

In 7 years, my boss has never denied me or anyone else that I can remember. She is very accommodating.

I don't think anything would get paid out if we left though.

[noodleoo]

Dec 5, 2012 14:15:54 GMT -5 explorer2001 said:

This makes me feel like they aren't doing something above board and they will take advantage of you. My prior job was that way. Theoretically you could take PTO, but they made it hell to do so and refused to pay anything out upon departure. There were constant veiled threats and pressure not to use PTO. Like when I took a whole day off for court with my divorce and they tried to make me come inspiteof court documents.

This might not be the case for you, but be careful.

This is what I worry about. I get 4 weeks now I use all of it. It is really important to me to be able to use vacation time. The HR guy said that the company is very good with work/life balance. A lot of the employees have been there a long time (per some digging on LinkedIn). That makes me think he's telling the truth. But I've seen HR in another company I worked at lie and hide truths to recruit people, I'm a little cynical and scared of getting into a bad situation. This is a new one I hadn't heard of.

[Deleted]

Dec 5, 2012 14:11:33 GMT -5 SJ said:

That is how we do it here. A lot of "younger" companies & start-ups use it too (Groupon, Gilt Groupe, etc.)

It's basically the honor system. They expect their employees to work hard and to be reasonable with their requests and time off. I think there is a lot of room for system abuse, but I have generally been happy with it.

This year I have taken less than 10 days off, but other years I have taken 20 or more. It is nice not to count or keep track, but there is some internal questioning of "am I pushing the line?" or "how much is too much?" etc.

This. I'd love to work for a company that handled vacation this way. I think it provides for a much better work/life balance.

[Susie]

My firm is like that, for the attorneys. (Staff gets a set amount of sick/personal/vacay).

There are pro's and con's.

Pros:
- I'm not limited to X amount of time off. If I want to go on vacation, I can.
- I don't have to count days/hours that I'm out and play those games.

Cons:
- I'm not entitled to any time off. If I want to go on vacation, I have to preemptively cover my work myself.
- I also have to figure out for myself whether any given liberty that I take is "too much." Knowing what is expected and appropriate is tough, especially when you're new to the office culture.
- If I get sick (like, truly, seriously unwell, not cold/flu), I'm honestly not sure what happens.
- This is kind of a hidden one: I don't have any PTO to fall back on, to make an otherwise unpaid maternity leave, paid. My mat leave will have some paltry STD pay and be otherwise entirely unpaid. I've been here 6+ years already. If I were accruing PTO during that time, I'd be better situated when it comes time for a mat leave.
- There's no PTO to accrue and later have paid out when I leave. It doesn't matter how many years I've been here or how "frugal" I've been with vacay time, I can't benefit from that frugality later if I need it. It feels very "what have you done for me lately?" in that sense.

[noodleoo]

Dec 5, 2012 14:34:53 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

It was like that at my old, small firm. It worked fine and was to my benefit, but I also had a long-standing relationship with my boss and knew him to be reasonable. If you get further in the process maybe you could request an opportunity to speak to current employees in the role you'd be taking (make it seem like you want to know about their general experiences, not just about vacation time of course) and see what they say.

I hope the interview went well by the way!

It is a big company, at least 200 employees at this location, about 3K worldwide. And I think it is company wide policy.

The interview did go well! They move *very* fast. Had a phone interview Tuesday, they asked immediate if I could do an informal, in person interview Wed (today!), then called me 30 mins after I left to set up a full interview for next Wed! I'm so excited, this is great for my ego. I'm trying to figure out if I want the job. I have an informal "lunch" meeting with a different company that is hiring tomorrow. How things change in a week!

[noodleoo]

Will do! I have an interview question, but I'll post it separately.

[martygras]

DH's company has DTO (discretionary time off) and they are encouraged to take it which is really nice since I get 18 days paid vacation plus managerial flex time. We're able to travel a lot but he has to make sure everything is covered or he has to be accessible.