Unlimited PTO etiquette

[Anonymous]

I’m a stodgy elder Millennia. New company has “unlimited PTO.”

How much time off is actually reasonable? Expected?

Trying to MMOB but employee who started at the same time has taken 6 weeks off in a 4 month period. Non consecutive like work 2 weeks, take a week off.

I’ve taken 2 days for being sick.

Years of limited PTO makes me fearful of taking time. Clearly I’m doing it wrong. What’s the norm?

[Anonymous]

It’s completely managers discretion.

I assume you’re not the manager

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a stodgy elder Millennia. New company has “unlimited PTO.”

How much time off is actually reasonable? Expected?

Trying to MMOB but employee who started at the same time has taken 6 weeks off in a 4 month period. Non consecutive like work 2 weeks, take a week off.

I’ve taken 2 days for being sick.

Years of limited PTO makes me fearful of taking time. Clearly I’m doing it wrong. What’s the norm?

Was this vacation time or sick time? If it was sick time, it wouldn’t be bad but just vacation time seems like a lot.

[Anonymous]

I hate unlimited PTO, it’s really just a tactic to not have to accrue and pay out leave. Also employees take less leave overall because of the uncertainty. I kind of love that your coworker is milking it, but they are going to be spoken to soon if it wasn’t a special circumstance like pre planned honeymoon or severe illness.

[Anonymous]

Op here - just vacation. They were really proud to tell the team that they worked through having COVID instead of taking time.

I guess I’m just old but taking time off for having a fever seems like what unlimited PTO should be used for.

I don’t want to be catty. I really just don’t know how much time I should be taking. I’m used to pretty strict caps on PTO and use it/lose it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here - just vacation. They were really proud to tell the team that they worked through having COVID instead of taking time.

I guess I’m just old but taking time off for having a fever seems like what unlimited PTO should be used for.

I don’t want to be catty. I really just don’t know how much time I should be taking. I’m used to pretty strict caps on PTO and use it/lose it.

Take more than you're taking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a stodgy elder Millennia. New company has “unlimited PTO.”

How much time off is actually reasonable? Expected?

Trying to MMOB but employee who started at the same time has taken 6 weeks off in a 4 month period. Non consecutive like work 2 weeks, take a week off.

I’ve taken 2 days for being sick.

Years of limited PTO makes me fearful of taking time. Clearly I’m doing it wrong. What’s the norm?

My company has unlimited PTO, but in the last few years amended the policy to say that after taking 30 days off in a year you should check in with your manager before taking additional time off. I see 30 days at the limit. We also get 11-12 federal holidays plus 3-4 additional days between Christmas and New Year. Additionally, in the US we have 10 sick days in addition to bereavement leave and 24 weeks of maternity leave for women.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate unlimited PTO, it’s really just a tactic to not have to accrue and pay out leave. Also employees take less leave overall because of the uncertainty. I kind of love that your coworker is milking it, but they are going to be spoken to soon if it wasn’t a special circumstance like pre planned honeymoon or severe illness.

+1

[Anonymous]

I am 47 and earn five weeks of annual leave and 2.5 weeks of sick leave per year. If I had your job, I would be planning to take 6 weeks of leave each year.

[Anonymous]

5 weeks a year is good. But unlimited without guidelines, minimums and totally at managers discretion is just an accounting tactic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate unlimited PTO, it’s really just a tactic to not have to accrue and pay out leave. Also employees take less leave overall because of the uncertainty. I kind of love that your coworker is milking it, but they are going to be spoken to soon if it wasn’t a special circumstance like pre planned honeymoon or severe illness.

+1

+2.

I took the least amount of time off at the job that had unlimited PTO.

[Anonymous]

OP, you *can* take off as much time as you want. However, in my experience, there are cultural norms within each company about how folks are supposed to treat unlimited PTO. So you need to talk to your management or to people who've been there longer and figure out those norms.

In general, they are things like:
*don't plan any long vacation during your work's busy period
*everyone takes off about 10 days around Christmas unless there's a business reason (sales to close out the year, etc) not to
*lots of people take the week of 4th of July
*don't take off more than two weeks in a row
*long weekends are ok every so often but don't plan on taking off every Friday
*if you take more than 6 weeks of leave in a given year, it will raise eyebrows

[Anonymous]

I am your age and similarly skeptical of unlimited PTO. My husband’s office has it and he seems to be cool with it, but it would really stress me out. Basically, since it feels like you need to justify it all the time, it ends up feeling like zero PTO.

I wouldn’t say this as a blanket rule or anything, but since you’re having trouble adjusting, here’s what I would do: Start from what PTO you had before the rule change. Let’s say it was 15 vacation days, 3 personal days, and 6 sick days (that’s what I have now). Unlimited is supposed to be a benefit, right? So add in a few days. I always just thought of personal days as vacation days, so that’s 18. So, give yourself a couple extra, that’s 20. 6 sick days was tight some years, so let’s say 8. Then I’d track my days and take 20 vacation days and up to eight sick days a year.

This works both ways - it would both stop me from using too many days, and encourage me to take more days if I had them because in my head they’d be use it or lose it. And it’s pretty stress free because there is no way that they can reasonably make a case that you’re not working enough if you literally only take 4 extra days than you were.

Just one way to think about it!

[Anonymous]

Well it's unlimited so they can take whatever they want and the company can decide if they want to rein it in or let it slide. That's the kind of thing they have to deal with if they want to have an unlimited PTO policy.

Personally, I'd take 4-6 weeks spread out, which is consistent with how much leave I've been given by employers with limited leave policies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate unlimited PTO, it’s really just a tactic to not have to accrue and pay out leave. Also employees take less leave overall because of the uncertainty. I kind of love that your coworker is milking it, but they are going to be spoken to soon if it wasn’t a special circumstance like pre planned honeymoon or severe illness.

This.