s/o PTO Policy Change - Thoughts?

[spankswife]

I currently have 3 weeks vacation, 3 personal days, and 7 sick days a year, so 25 paid days off per year.

My company is debating going to a flat 20 days off, "use them however you want" policy.

What do you think about this? Do you prefer having just a flat number of days off? TBH, I am not very pleased, but I wanted to see if there was something I am missing.

[drloretta]

I would prefer to have the same # of days off to use however. I doubt I'd ever use 7 sick days/year

[Deleted]

Before I had DD, I rarely used sick days; I saved maybe two for that purpose. I'd rather be able to just take off when I want to without having to pretend to be sick to do so. You also have the flexibility to schedule a PTO day in advance, which you can't technically do with a sick day.

I do think you may personally come out behind because you're "losing" five days, but all things being equal, I like the more "neutral" PTO bucket.

[noodleoo]

It sucks that they are reducing the overall number of days. However, since I don't get sick much and I feel way to guilty to use sick days when I'm not really sick, I probably would never have really gotten to use those 7 sick days anyway. So it sounds like the change is mostly a wash.

Most companies seem to be moving to not distinguishing sick days and vacation days. I don't like that because I feel like people always think of PTO as vacation, and then come in while sick because they don't want to "waste" their "vacation" time. I HATE people to work sick with a vengeance.

So yeah, I'd be "meh" about it.  It is not like you really have any choice, right?  Are they polling the employees on what they prefer?  Did you use the 7 sick days a year?  And what is the difference between a vacation day and personal day? I've never had personal days.

[ECB]

Now that I have a young child, I use a lot more sick days than before. And as I can roll them over indefinitely, I"m actually fine w/ having separate sick vs vacation (but I also work for the state and get 22 days VACATION along w/ 15 sick).

At my old company, something similar happened as w/ you. We went from 25 combined days to 22 flat PTO. I was bummed to lose those 3 days.

[Deleted]

Sept 16, 2014 13:19:40 GMT -5 noodleoo said:

I HATE people to work sick with a vengeance.

Man, taking a sick day for myself would be such a luxury.  I will drag myself to work when I'm at death's door so I can hoard my sick days for my DD's constant illnesses. We have no family in our state.  Do you know how much a back-up care nanny costs?  $120 per day.  We do that sometimes and then DH and I patch together our own sick time so each illness doesn't set us back several hundred dollars.  Must be nice.

[noodleoo]

Sept 16, 2014 13:27:17 GMT -5 @linzercookie said:

Sept 16, 2014 13:19:40 GMT -5 noodleoo said:

I HATE people to work sick with a vengeance.

Man, taking a sick day for myself would be such a luxury.  I will drag myself to work when I'm at death's door so I can hoard my sick days for my DD's constant illnesses. We have no family in our state.  Do you know how much a back-up care nanny costs?  $120 per day.  We do that sometimes and then DH and I patch together our own sick time so each illness doesn't set us back several hundred dollars.  Must be nice.

I get that everyone's circumstances are different and you have to make your own choices that are best for your family.  But coming in to work when you are sick and contagious sucks for everyone when you pass your illness on to everyone at work.  I hope you at least do your best to avoid spreading germs when you are sick.  

This is also why companies should be flexible and give sick days and encourage people to use them or figure out ways to let them work from home.  It is so bad for overall productivity when one sick person leads to the entire department getting sick.

[xokell2]

Sept 16, 2014 13:27:17 GMT -5 @linzercookie said:

Sept 16, 2014 13:19:40 GMT -5 noodleoo said:

I HATE people to work sick with a vengeance.

Man, taking a sick day for myself would be such a luxury.  I will drag myself to work when I'm at death's door so I can hoard my sick days for my DD's constant illnesses. We have no family in our state.  Do you know how much a back-up care nanny costs?  $120 per day.  We do that sometimes and then DH and I patch together our own sick time so each illness doesn't set us back several hundred dollars.  Must be nice.

So your coworkers just have to deal with potentially catching your contagious illness because of your child are situation? 

I know people with family members who have chronic illnesses and they take intermittent loa exactly for that reason. $120 a day is what my normal sitter costs. Kids are hard yo

[spankswife]

I guess the theory is good. I'm pregnant, so I will need maternity leave next year (which I use my days so it is paid leave), so maybe I can negotiate something for next year/maternity leave. Or maybe that is why it is bothering me more. Although outside of maternity leave I hardly ever use sick days.

DH is a SAHD so he does the "sick days."

IDK, I still feel burned. Maybe I can negotiate a few more since I have been here 13 years.

[v]

My firm recently changed our policy to that. We used to get 20 vacation and 5 sick; now we get 25 PTO. It works well for me as sick time is super frowned-upon anyway so I can't imagine taking 5 days per year (unless we're talking about a major illness that would put me on STD), and sick days didn't carry over but all PTO does, so those 5 days now carry over. That will benefit me financially when I leave.

[spankswife]

Sept 16, 2014 13:44:53 GMT -5 v said:

My firm recently changed our policy to that. We used to get 20 vacation and 5 sick; now we get 25 PTO. It works well for me as sick time is super frowned-upon anyway so I can't imagine taking 5 days per year (unless we're talking about a major illness that would put me on STD), and sick days didn't carry over but all PTO does, so those 5 days now carry over. That will benefit me financially when I leave.

Well that's awesome! I like the "one bank" idea, I guess I don't like the conversion of 25=20.

I'm going to have to give my negotiating skills a dusting off...

[cheezer]

I don't mind the one bank idea but I'd be pissed that they're effectively giving me fewer days off.

At my current job being sick is highly highly discouraged and we're not really supposed to use all our vacation days either although the CEO is trying really hard to change the culture for that saying that people work better if they get breaks. I absolutely agree with him.

[dexteroni]

I prefer the "all one pot" approach, but I would be really pissed at losing a week of PTO. I would work on making sure I retained all of my days.

[Deleted]

Sept 16, 2014 13:35:23 GMT -5 xokell2 said:

Sept 16, 2014 13:27:17 GMT -5 @linzercookie said:

Man, taking a sick day for myself would be such a luxury.  I will drag myself to work when I'm at death's door so I can hoard my sick days for my DD's constant illnesses. We have no family in our state.  Do you know how much a back-up care nanny costs?  $120 per day.  We do that sometimes and then DH and I patch together our own sick time so each illness doesn't set us back several hundred dollars.  Must be nice.

So your coworkers just have to deal with potentially catching your contagious illness because of your child are situation? 

I know people with family members who have chronic illnesses and they take intermittent loa exactly for that reason. $120 a day is what my normal sitter costs. Kids are hard yo

(I actually work in my own office so no one has to deal with me. And I've been pretty lucky that it hasn't been an issue.)

But I was just trying to point out that everyone has different circumstances. Not everyone can just take off for every sniffle. Maybe someone is caring for an aging parent and wants to reserve time for that. The U.S. has terrible leave policies in general. My European coworkers get far more leave than we do here. And that $120/day is on top of our usual childcare costs ... you know, the daycare that won't accept her because she's contagious but still wants their tuition PLUS the nanny.

ETA: This is an issue that disproportionately affects lower-income moms even if they're salaried. Sure, $120 might not be that much to you or me, but it can be a big deal to someone who might barely make $120/day herself. And chances are she doesn't even have the option of employing a back-up care nanny because that's a fancy-pants benefit we get through DH's job.

[genet313]

We have a flat 20 "use them as you want" policy, and it's just OK.  Even though everyone at my firm uses every single day (including myself), I don't think 20 is really enough time off overall, TBH.     But I do like the flexibility of being able to just "take a day" and not have to characterize it as a "sick day." 

Most of the time, if I'm taking a "sick day" now, I just call it a "work from home" day and work from my bed.

[LoveTrains]

A lot of it definitely depends on what covers over or if you have "use it or lose it" time. We have "use it or lose it" time for BOTH sick and vacation. I don't even take all my vacation time but I would be annoyed if it was somehow tied to our sick time. I guess we have a very generous sick policy - we technically only get 5 days, but for example some of you may remember that I had whooping cough in May. I was out for a week with that (I was told I was not allowed to come to work even if I wanted to!!!) plus I had missed a few days earlier in the year. There was no penalty to me for going over my sick days and I guess I just got extra paid leave. But for some reason I would be annoyed if I had to use a week of vacation because I got seriously ill. It would annoy me.

[sillygoosegirl]

I prefer to have one "bank" of PTO. I don't like trying to decide if I'm "sick enough" to take sick time when I need a "mental health day" or whatever (and back when my anxiety was bad, it wasn't that uncommon I'd be trying to make this decision after being awake until 3am with awful anxiety).

But losing 20% of your paid days off to get there? Not cool at all.

[delawarejen]

My company made that change many years ago, but they didn't cut the number of days when they went to the new system. I like having the one bank. It helps keep people from calling in sick (and affecting patient care) just to use up their time. Also, people were lying and saying they were sick because their kids were sick, which is a problem when they return to work (since I work at a hospital, it makes a difference for patient care when the employees came back to work if they weren't really the ones sick in the first place versus if they were).

[mich1]

It depends upon whether you are allowed to roll over any days to the next year.

My last job had 12 sick days of vacation/year and I got 5 weeks of vacation. I just rolled over my sick time, so by the time I got sick I had over 400 hours of sick time and all 5 weeks of vacation (I had planned on taking 3 weeks, 2 at Christmas and another week in Mexico). I needed every single hour of both my sick and vacation time when I went out and it would have just been enough had my other joint not gotten infected too.

My job was such that if I had something going on in the lab, I had to get there to at least get me to a point where I could stop. So many days, I went into work feeling like crap. But it was either doing that or losing thousands of $$ in supplies and samples that could not be replaced. I tried to make it such that I'd go in early, keep my head low and get the hell out as soon as I could.

[spankswife]

We can currently roll over 5 vacation days, but you lose sick days, and you get paid out 50% of personal days. I am not sure what the new policy would bring. I would image you would be able to roll over 5 days.

I never thought of people coming to work sick bc they don't want to use their "vacation time." Ughhhh

One bad apple spoils the bunch!

[Deleted]

I wouldn't like it. Sick people should not be incentivized to come to work.


Plus they're reducing your days. Which totally bites

[Wallflower]

I can't point to statistics, but I would think this would cause people to come in when they are actually sick because they want to use their PTO for vacation. I worked for a company once that had *no* sick time, and this is what people had to do.

And I'm cautious, so I would reserve days just to cover "in case I get sick", then you get to the end of the year and have these days that you haven't taken (and with some companies, you'll lose it if you don't use it). I'd just be really annoyed, especially when a company wanted to position it as a "benefit."

[gretchenindisguise]

I disliked having sick time and annual time combined. I found that lots of people, myself included, would come in sick when they shouldn't have because they didn't want to use what they viewed as 'vacation' time. Now that I'm back in a system with it separated - I feel a lot less guilty taking sick days and/or mental health days - and my coworkers use them similarly. I think it helps with burn out and keeping illness away.

[hamster]

I love my bank of unassigned PTO. Nobody cares why I'm taking a day off or wonders if I'm only "sick."

[curbsideprophet]

From my experience people are more likely to come to work sick if it all one pot of time. They don't want to waste their vacation days on being sick. It sucks.

I also would not be happy with the reduction in time off.

[Deleted]

I agree with @linzercookie, taking a day off when I'm sick myself is almost impossible. I had the flu Sunday night/ Monday morning, and ended up going in to work Monday afternoon because I had a meeting I couldn't miss, and I would only have to take 4 hours sick leave off. And I work in government, where we can roll sick leave over. I have like 120 hours but man, that time is PRECIOUS for my next (someday) maternity leave.

American leave polices suck all the way around.

I'd be pissed that you'll be losing PTO. Is it a "use it or lose it" kind of policy change, or can you roll it over year to year?

[niq]

On the plus side you get to cash out 5 more days when you leave.

Most places I've worked don't make a vacation/sik distinction, but I work in an industry where WFH (or "WFH") when you're sick is an option. When I have a man cold I go into the office and wear a mask -- it works in East Asia!

[undecidedowl]

I don't like it. It encourages people to come to work sick so they can use all the PTO on vacation. My company just made a similar switch. They took away unlimited sick time and gave 4 additional days PTO to cover sick days and dr. appts. That is not nearly enough with a young kid who gives me every illness out there.

Plus, ours is "use it or lose it" by end of calendar year so there is no good way to 'save' enough days for sick time and still plan holiday vacations.