vacation

Lola815

how many of you let you employees cash out their vacation time and if you do would you mind sharing your policies. Thanks!

ray a

We encourage ee's to use their paid time off, but at the end of the year, we reimburse up to 40 hours of unused earned vacation/personal time - time in excess of 40 hours is forfeited. Exempt ee's are reimbursed for vacation time only. The checks are distributed mid-January the week in-between regular paydays.

CCH1400

At our agency, "days accumulated in excess of 25 days at the end of the calendar year (December 31) will be sold to the employee at 50% of the accumulated time using the December 31st rate of pay". This pay out takes place during the month of January.

Hope this is some help.

Hunter1

Never understood the rationale for this policy. Wouldn't do it under any circumstances. Just MHO

POPEYE

We allow anyone who has more than 80 hours accured to cash out any portion
over the 80 hours. We do stipulate a cut-off date each year so that
we are not hit the last pay period of the year with 200+ requests.

Sunny

We used to allow employees with more than two weeks vacation to "sell" a week at a time. We stopped this practice the last two years, however, as too expensive. We now operate under a "use it or lose it" policy.

I too would advise against buying back vacation. Vacation exists for a purpose - to give employees time off with pay. If you begin selling it there are some who will use almost no time off - a sure way to court burn-out.

mwild31

Hi Lola815 - Here's our vacation benefit breakdown:

1 year = 1 week of vacation
3 years = 2 weeks of vacation
5 years = 3 weeks of vacation

Any employee that has been with the company for 5 years or more, may cash out one week of vacation. It's somewhat of a 'reward'. Everyone else is out of luck, unless the vacation request is approved & due to production capacity it gets denied (and it's too close to the anniversary date to reschedule), then the employee can cash out. I'm with others, I don't like to cash out vacation - but our policy is a nice benefit for employees with a lot of service.

Lola815

Thanks for the responses. Right now we don't allow employees to cash out vacation time, but it was brought up and I thought I would look into it. All of your responses have been helpful. Thanks!!!

Pork

lola815: If Employee Relations is also in your title as HR, I recommend you have your policy so written to allow the manager/supervisor to approve and take care of our dedicated workers. It is the long term employee that has a difficult time leaving his company for two, three, and four weeks a year. We allow, since our Department Heads are accountable for their budget and execution of same, as long as they approve it, we will pay it. Again keep HR out of the decision making arena on execution of policy, when it is not your need to be involved except to insure the ee gets treated well. HERE ME WELL, "A USE IT OR LOSE IT POLICY", is not taking care of the EEs of a company. I try to keep some reins on the issue to guide and control the payouts. We do not need the payout at the last month of the year, ours being January to December, yet it is this pocket of cash awarded in the form of vacation days to the ee that will help them over the hump for the Christmas season.

Good luck with your decision!

PORK

Uncas

Lola815,

In California,"use it or lose it" policies re. vacation are illegal. Vacation is a earned benefit that cannot be lost. I agree with Pork that the problem usually arises with long term employees who have higher vacation allowances. They are most often foremen or supervisors who have trouble being away from work for extended periods. What we do is require that they use at least 50% of earned vacation each year. If they do not schedule it, their department manager will schedule it for them. We want people to take some time off. Any un-used vacation is paid out on the employee's anniversary date. This has worked well for us.

marc

I believe it is a matter of state law whether or not the vacation time is earned. In Nevada, you do not have to pay out vacation time when an ee leaves the company unless it is your companies policy to do so. In other words, a consistent practice.

We follow a use it or lose it policy here. Anything over 40 hours at the end of the year is lost.