Unlimited vacation policies

[Reynold]

I've had a previous employer officially switch to an unlimited time off policy without actually telling the employees, effectively removing accrued PTO from their books. That is pretty nefarious. It actually cost me a few thousand dollars of PTO when I left.

Wow that's shady as hell. Our company paid out everyone's accrued balances when they switched, which seems pretty fair to me.

When a former company I worked for switched from separate vacation and sick time to one big batch of PTO for both, HR originally announced that accrued sick time would be paid out (I had probably 8-10 weeks, I almost never got sick, and unlike vacation time it accrued indefinitely).  A few weeks later, after combining the systems, they announced that would NOT happen, apparently accounting had fits when they saw how much time was accrued.  I still did ok afterwards, since I didn't get sick the additional time from that added in to PTO meant an extra week "vacation" each year, but I was kind of annoyed. 

[Guses]

I've had a previous employer officially switch to an unlimited time off policy without actually telling the employees, effectively removing accrued PTO from their books. That is pretty nefarious. It actually cost me a few thousand dollars of PTO when I left.

Wow that's shady as hell. Our company paid out everyone's accrued balances when they switched, which seems pretty fair to me.

When a former company I worked for switched from separate vacation and sick time to one big batch of PTO for both, HR originally announced that accrued sick time would be paid out (I had probably 8-10 weeks, I almost never got sick, and unlike vacation time it accrued indefinitely).  A few weeks later, after combining the systems, they announced that would NOT happen, apparently accounting had fits when they saw how much time was accrued.  I still did ok afterwards, since I didn't get sick the additional time from that added in to PTO meant an extra week "vacation" each year, but I was kind of annoyed.

It was likely a calculated HR move so that employees did not go and take a bunch of sick leave since it was going to waste. There is no way accounting did not know about the current balance of the sick leave. This is something that needs to be put on the books each year.

[merula]

It was likely a calculated HR move so that employees did not go and take a bunch of sick leave since it was going to waste. There is no way accounting did not know about the current balance of the sick leave. This is something that needs to be put on the books each year.

Or HR made all the decisions and announcements, and only consulted Accounting about the cost after the fact. Accounting likely didn't have a fit, but management did as soon as they saw the cost of what HR had already announced.

As silos go, those two are about as far apart as you can get, in my experience.

[asauer]

I think this could be either good or bad depending on how scared you are as an employee.  I think the PTO policies with parameters (and hopefully generous ones) protect employees from asshole bosses who deny vacation on a whim.  With the parameters you can go to HR and say, look, I've been allotted x days and I haven't been able to take any.  Being in HR, it really does help us deal with d-bag bosses.  With out that soft guarantee it would be much harder for me to say WTF?  Give the employee a break!

[jprince7827]

I see a lot of tech startups have a new policy regarding time off. They call it "unlimited vacation".

Of course, we all know that FIRE is the ultimate unlimited vacation policy.

I wonder how these policies are actually implemented. I'm guessing the time off isn't as unlimited as they advertise.

Considering I have about 6 weeks of paid time off (sick and vacation time combined), I think that's about as unlimited as you could get in the corporate world. I wonder how this would compare with working somewhere with unlimited vacation.

Anyone have experience with how these policies are implemented in reality?

They do it because they know that on average employees with unlimited vacation take less than 2 weeks a year of vacation, whereas employees with clearly delineated vacation take exactly that amount(often 2 weeks.)

My firm has it and indeed I feel guilty whenever I even contemplate vacationing, and so does everybody else. The end result is we feel we have to justify the right to take a vacation to our manager, and our manager can include the fact we took one in our performance reviews as a sign that we're "not all there."

None of this is written, or spoken. It's just a known part of the culture.

[Money Mouse]

I get 5 weeks vacation and have a hard time using it all. I'm prohibited from taking more than 1 or 2 days at a time from June - October due to it being our busy season, and the rest of the year I can only take off if 1) no one else has taken off and 2) our temp is available, which she isn't always due to her agencies demands and her own vacation schedule. I'm requesting a single day off in a few weeks and the approval is still pending because my boss wants to see how busy we are that week first. I can't take off at Thanksgiving because boss always takes that week. I've asked for time off during Christmas and she "wants to wait until we are closer to the holidays before dividing up who takes which week". Meaning she wants the prime days and my co-worker wants the next-best, leaving me with nothing as usual (most years I don't care but this year my father may be in town so I'd like at least a few days off) but she doesn't want to admit it so she's procrastinating. Then in January I'll get yelled at because I'll be half way through my service year (my vacation time runs based on service year which is based on hire date) and will still have 4 weeks of vacation time that I need to take by July 2016 (really May 2016 since I can't take time in June) and the boss doesn't want me taking vacation every single month. I can't win for losing!

I generally like my job but figuring out time to take off is a PITA.

[Chuck]

I get four weeks of vacation, which is more than I can use. It has cash value in the event that I leave the company, whereas "unlimited" vacation doesn't.

I'd rather keep what I have.