PTO and Vacation pay

Squishypig

We are looking to change our PTO policy from 5 personal days, 5 sick days and 5 vacation days to 15 generic days that employees could use at their discretion (with approval of course). In Louisiana, if an employee has unused accrued vacation time at termination we are required to pay that out.

If we switch to the generic days would we then not have to worry about vacation pay since technically they were never designation "vacation days"? Or will all the generic days be considered for vacation pay?

Johnette
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San Francisco

We are also required to pay accrued and available vacation at time of termination. We discussed and dismissed going to PTO because we would have to pay all PTO at time of termination per California law. There would be no way to separate out the vacation part of it.

dhnyct

We use PTO under an accrual per pay period method rather than allowed/taken and feel the positive aspects for benefit administration far outweigh the negative possibilities. There will always be those ee's who stay up all night thinking of ways to beat any system, but we rarely have excessive hours to pay out at termination.

RoseF

We are in Louisiana also. We, too changed from a sick/vacation time off system to strictly PTO - Paid Time Off for whatever reason, combining sick and vacation time into one "bank". We pay any unused PTO at termination, but have not found this to be a problem. Most ee's use PTO as it is accrued (10 hours per month). We do offer an additional "Extended Illness" benefit of 2.77 hours per month that is banked to be used for occasions of illness (documented by Doctor's note) of more than 3 days so ee's don't risk using all PTO for the flu or surgery or something serious. For any absence requiring absence over 3 days, EIB picks up starting on day 4 until used up. EE's can bank it year after year. It is a valuable benefit for long-term employees. Our Benefit Handbook fully explains that while unused PTO is paid at termination, EIB is a benefit that, if not used, is not paid at termination. The EE's prefer this method as oppossed to sick and vacation time.