PTO for Charity Work

BonnieS · May 2009

I work for a small (30 employees) company in which almost two-thirds of our employees telecommute from their homes scattered around the country. The owner has long been active in charitable work ranging from local, church food banks to large organizations such as the Make A Wish Foundation, and he would like the company to invest in both our employees and their communities by offering up to a week of PTO in which to do some sort of volunteer work. He has tasked me to research this idea and find out how such a plan should be administered, what things we need to consider, the costs involved, etc.

Although we have a great group of professional employees now, I realize that at some point down the road there is a good possibility of abuse and that we need to set good, legal parameters. One of the first hurdles I see would be to decide how to determine which charities would be deemed "eligible" for the program.

I haven't seen any recent threads on this subject and would really appreciate any comments or suggestions any of you may have on setting up this type of program. If you already do something similar and have a policy or guidelines you wouldn't mind sharing, I'd be very grateful.

Thanks,
Bonnie

stilldazed · June 2009

Sounds like an noble gesture, and I think you're right if your hunch is that it could be an administrative nightmare. I've had experience with something similar; however, it was managed differently. There was no clear one week off to work with a charitable organization. Instead, employees' time away was managed on an as-needed basis with direct communication by the 'volunteer' to his/her supervisor. The time was counted as company time off, and there was no docking from a personal PTO bank. Likewise, the tribulations RE: exemptions and salaried pay were not an issue. Given a choice, I think I'd opt for the intermittent activity. In case your boss is sold on the week-off thing, develop a list of non-profits or other volunteer organizations that align with your company's mission/purpose or your boss' philosophy, offer the list and the opportunity as a nonmandatory option for staff, track their time as you would for other vacation time, encourage local news coverage (to help keep your employees honest), insist that all who do opt to volunteer still get their jobs done without overtime, and do not hold the refusal to participate against anyone who chooses to let someone else do the volunteering. A side benefit may be that if your list of acceptable agencies is short enough, your staff may have to volunteer in teams if they really want to exercise their option to benefit all of your company's local mankind.

I'd be curious to know what else you find if you'll keep us updated.

best wishes,

BonnieS · June 2009

Thanks so much for your suggestions. You've raised some good points especially with the teams of volunteers, involving the local media, and making sure there was no overtime as a result of volunteering. I'm also glad to hear of your experience with intermittent time off. The boss had originally envisioned an entire week off, but I had thought we'd have greater participation if people could take maybe a half day at a time if they wanted. Glad to know that worked well for you.

So far I haven't heard of any other programs and really appreciate your input. I'll keep you posted on how things turn out.

PTO for Charity Work

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