PTO time

Ty · September 2002

We have a PTO policy, in this policy we state that PTO may be used as vacation time, sick time, or to take care of personal matters. We also state in another paragraph that PTO time should be requested no later than one week in advance. My problem is we are having several employees call in sick and using their unused PTO time for this, this practice has been going on before I came. Our Director feels that all sick call ins should be classified as unexcused absences, which I agreed. I want to make sure that we are in compliance with this issue. We do have an unexcused absence paragraph in our PTO policy, I am being challanged with I have available PTO time in my bank and should be able to use it for sick days.

Rockie on another posting you discussed this some would it be possible to get a copy of your policy

Thanks need answers soon.

NaeNae55 · September 2002

So, when you say PTO may be used as sick time but you have to arrange for it a week ahead, it is your intention to only use it for doctor appointments and medical procedures. Right? What if an employee makes arrangements to use PTO for a procedure that should take 1 day but it ends up taking 3 due to complications. Is 1 day PTO and the other 2 unexcused?

I think your idea is a littel harsh. If it is supposed to be for sick leave, then let it be for sick leave! I have found that if you force employees to go without pay when they are sick, many of them will come in and spread the flu or whatever all over the place. Then your production really goes down. We have a PTO policy which is for vacation, personal leave, and sick leave. And anyone who calls in sick gets to use it. Of course, people like to work here and so no one ever calls is 'just coz they don't feel like going to work today'. We have had problems in the past with employees who are only sick on Mondays after a party weekend, but they were eventually weeded out.

Ok. I am rambling, and it's time to get off my soap box. ;;)

HRGirl · September 2002

I don't know of anyone that has planned sicknesses? If you state in your policy that PTO can be used for sick time, you need to define exactly what sick time is to your company. It sounds like you want your employees to plan when they are going to be ill and then and only then can they use PTO.

Ty · September 2002

I think the problem with our PTO Policy and the abuse of sick leave is because at the beginning of the year we give all employees their total PTO days for the year in their bank with the idea the time will be used with discretion. Some of our employees have used up all their time by the end of September, I tried to explain to the Director that if we issued PTO time as the employee accrues it then it would be alot easier to control the sick time that he feels is being abuse by the employee using the PTO days that they have in their bank.

How does other PTO banks work.

NaeNae55 · September 2002

We divide the annual accrual amount by number of paydays and then accrue that figure each pay period. New employees accrue from day one, but cannot use their time until after the initial 90 day period. There is also a maximum accrual allowed.

We have seldom had trouble with employees abusing the system. When they do, the supervisor deals with it appropriately. Any supervisor who forgets their obligation to handle this will find it brought up in their own review.

Good luck!

ConfusedHRinTN · September 2002

We use a PTO bank in our office. However, you are only allowed to use the time after you accrue it and you are only allowed to carry fourth quarter time into the next year and it must be used in the first quarter. We are flexible when employees are sick in January or if they want to take a vacation earlier than they have the time. This seems to make our system work fine.

Your sick time policy is a little harsh. It seems discriminatory against working moms who tend to use their PTO to care for ill children. Most of the time they do not know about the illness until the day it happens. If you are going to say you can use PTO for sick days, you must let people do just that. I know I do not plan out a week in advance when I am going to be sick.

Rockie · September 2002

Ty:
We have a "proposed" policy that our Executive Committee wants to implement the first of the year. We have been almost forced to put this into place. I am in a medical facility where people call in consistently on Mondays and Fridays and the day before or day after a holiday. Back in the spring, we called employees' attention to this and asked for their cooperation in getting a handle on these unscheduled calls offs as they were creating issues with staffing and patient care concerns. We advised at that time if this continued, we would have to put a stringent policy in place.

People, being people, ignored this and business as usual. Our Executive Committee came up with a policy that mandated that every employee got three unscheduled absences a year. On the 4th unscheduled, they are assessed an extra PTO day as a penalty. This is per episode, not per day. Example: If an employee got the flu and was out for five days, they would only have the penalty assessed once.

Is this harsh? Yes, it is. But it is also harsh when we don't have enough staff to cover our facility when five or six individuals call in on a Monday or Friday consistently. Should we handle these individuals in a disciplinary manner? Yes we should, but supervisors will not do this.

Is this going to be unfair to some? Yes, it will. If an employee has a "bad year",whether it be for children's illnesses, spouse illnesses, personal illnesses, pet illnesses, or whatever, it will appear harsh to them. But, as we told employees, voluntary compliance did not help and we had to do something to put some teeth into a policy.

I would have loved to have done something differently, but individuals could not come up with any other solutions to this major problem.

Of course, this policy would not pertain to any FMLA absences.

Margaret Morford · September 2002

Rockie,

What about including in your corrective action or attendance policy language that allows you to address a pattern of absences despite the fact that the employee has PTO to cover it? Then you are only addressing the abusers. The employee gets written up for the pattern and not for the missed days. I'll send you language if you will e-mail me.

Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]

Ty · September 2002

Thank You Rockie I know a few people felt our Policy was quite harsh but by giving PTO days all up front we are at the mercy of the employee when they use up all their time by September. I am in the same situation you are in, We are a Medical facility also and have people calling in on Mondays and Fridays and also the day before a holiday and after a holiday or also trying to extend their vacations by a day. We have also brought this to our employees attention and asked for their cooperation but to no avail. I aslo agree it is hard to get the supervisors to discipline these individuals. I know we are not being fair to the employees who don't abuse the policy, Our whole facility suffers for this. We all know that policies are written for the minority who try so hard to push to the limit.

Is the unscheduled absences policy going to be incorporated into your PTO policy or will it be a separate issue.

Thanks

Rockie · September 2002

Ty: We will make this a separate policy "Unscheduled Absences" directly following our attendance policy in the handbook.

moneyman · September 2002

We have had some problems too with a Paid Leave Policy that credits the bank will all leave for the entire calendar year. The management felt that this was a great "new hire" incentive because beyond their 90-day introductory period, a new employee did not have to wait to schedule vacation/personal leave. We assume that we have chosen well and that the new employee will be a long term employee (or certainly hang around until the end of the year). We specifically advise people to be carefule in scheduling time off since the entire bank is for all absences. When that bank runs out, any time after that is going to be unexcused and subject to disciplinary procedures. We have had to issue a verbal warning only twice, otherwise, people here seem to be adults and schedule with caution.

I think that if your policy says that it can be used for sick leave, you need to allow it or further clarify. But, it really seems that your issue here is needing time AFTER all time have been exhausted and that would be a separate issue from using sick leave from PTO. I have seen many people go back to separating out the leave, vacation and personal is one thing and sick is another. When you exhaust your sick leave, you are subject to disciplinary action. I don't like that because we have many people here who will take all their sick leave even when they are not sick, and people who will not take any sick leave and will have these days just "hanging out" there. We felt that the combined rewarded the non-sick people by allowing them to take more personal time.

Rockie · September 2002

Margaret: We do address disciplinary procedures in our current attendance policy, but I would be interested in what you would suggest. Email is
[email]HR@scheart.com[/email].

Thanks.

MBAPTOstudy · October 2002

My name is Zachary Shelton and I am an MBA student at the University of Maryland. I am in a consulting class doing a semester long group project on implementation of a PTO program. We are investigating all facets of implementation and my group of 6 split research roles. I am researching 5 states (Maryland, Massachusetts, Virginia, Florida, and California) in regard to their state labor laws concerning the following 2 issues:

-Upon termination, if an employee has unused vacation or personal time will he/she be compensated for that unused time (if the employer clearly spells out that unused time won’t be compensated)?

-How does each state regard how vacation/personal should accrue? For example, in some states time must accrue every pay period. If there are 10 of vacation time and 26 time periods then per pay period an employee earns 10/26=0.3846 days off. In other states, time is accrued monthly or even yearly. If yearly, time is given in full at the end of the year so if an employee is fired in July and has not taken a day of vacation that year, he/she won’t be compensated.

Does anyone in the forum have a POCs for Maryland, Massachusetts, Virginia, Florida, and California to address the above two issues? Any help would be greatly appreciated and my group would be willing to share our findings/paper and quote those who assist us in the document. Thank you in advance.

Zach

PTO time

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