Personal Leave versus Sick and Vacation

karen_worldharbors_com · June 2009

We currently have a policy where employees accrue 4 hours of sick time per month (6 days per year) and there is a separate policy in place for vacation time. After one year, 1 week, 2 years 2 weeks, 5 years 3 weeks, etc. We are considering changing this policy to one that converts this paid time off to personal time. Since not everyone takes all of their sick time, this could be a benefit to them, and if they do take all of it, it could take some away depending on how we implement this. Does anyone have any suggestions on how best to make this type of change?

NaeNae55 · June 2009

Have you taken an informal poll to see how employees will feel about this? That should be your first move. Sometimes what sounds great to us backfires big-time.

If you decide to move forward, communicate, communicate, communicate. Then leave ample time before implementation so everyone has time to get used to the idea.

Question: if you make the change, how will you handle sick leave if congress pushes through the minimum 7 days a year sick leave law?

Good luck!

Nae

KSR6450 · June 2009

Your policy is the same as ours. One question, do you allow sick time and/or vacation time to carry over? If you do then how will you decide what carries over from year to year. I'm sure I am not being clear; lack of sleep does that to me.

Dutch2 · June 2009

Also consider if you will pay every departing ee all of the PTO that have accmulated but not used. This could be a hit!
Like Nae said you must be sure to communicate this very clearly to everyone.

ACU Frank · June 2009

One of the barriers for us has been how to handle the sick time that has been carried over to now. For example, I have employees with more than 200 hours of sick time on the books. There are probably a lot of you with even more... our carryover limits are relatively low.

Holly Jones · June 2009

Another thing to consider before choosing PTO, rather than separate sick leave/vacation leave, is whether the change may encourage unwanted presenteeism. That is, employees coming to work sick, rather than taking a much-needed sick day, simply because they don't want to use up PTO and take away from their "more valuable vacation time." This may be a very unwelcome change if employees work in relatively close quarters or, if coughing and sneezing employees can sequester themselves off to a closed office with a box of Kleenex, it may not matter too much.

This is, I suppose, the other side of employees taking a "sick day," cough cough, when they should be taking a "vacation day." Some workplaces may have problems with the former, some the latter, and, of course, some lucky ones won't have issues with either.

NaeNae55 · June 2009

Frank: You reminded me of another life where the employer decided to change the sick leave policy. All accrued sick leave beyond a small amount (I think it was 40 or 60 hours) was put into an 'extended sick leave' bank. If anyone was sick more than 3 days the leave came out of ESL. The idea was that those who had accrued hundreds of hours over the years could still count on it if they were every really sick. The new sick leave was paid out when you termed and had a max you could accrue. Some employees were hot about it at first, but since only about 1 percent ever accessed it, employees realized they would never have needed it and the furor eventually went away.

HR Susan · June 2009

We put a plan in place such as this. In a nutshell, we picked a date and froze the employee's "personal" bank. Employee's could work that bank off as long as they stayed employed and were paid out if they terminated, but it never grew. We took the vacation alotment and the personal time alotment that individuals were eligible for and rolled it together. They accrued time weekly and saw their accrual on the paystubs. We also changed to a 40 hour carryover. Since the plan changed over in the middle of the year we had to prorate the accrual of time through the end of the year. There was also the element of anniversary which had to be built into the proration.

Took some education of the employees and initially, some were convinced they were losing something, but they really weren't and after the first year, everyone seemed to be pleased with the change.

Personal Leave versus Sick and Vacation

Comments