Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by VectorLock on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @10:25AM (#19199544)

>When I worked a Geckoboard they had a great system where you had unlimited paid time off, but you had to take at least 25 days off each year.

Thats doing it right. Or pay people for the vacation time they don't use.

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Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by nick_g on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @10:32AM (#19199592)

I would expect that paying people for unused vacation would incentivize employees overworking themselves leading to reduced quality of output. In a sense, I expect that it would magnify the existing issues with unlimited PTO. It seems like this would be neither good for employee or employer.

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Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by acomjean on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @10:53AM (#19199755)

Most companies only let you bank so many pto (Paid Time Off) hours and carry them over year to year. I think this came about because of accounting change where employee hours are considered a liability (Hours/Money owed for nothing in return), but I might be wrong on that.

As a result employees can't just bank their vacation hours and get a big payday when they leave. It tends to only take a couple years to get up to the max, and you end up with "use it or loose it" pto.

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Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by ghaff on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @05:17PM (#19203434)

It's been accounting rules for a very long time. It's pretty much Accounting 101. If you accrue liabilities that you're obligated to provide (either in the form of employee time off or pay-out upon departure), that's a textbook liability.

Which is why employers almost always cap in some form or another; the exact mechanism is partially determined by state law.

I worked for a company once that, during a bad spell, eliminated an accrual cap to encourage people to bank vacation. The result was that a not small number of people who weren't really into taking vacation just let their balances balloon. The company eventually forced people to work down their balances.

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Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by NullPrefix on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @12:22PM (#19200735)

>Hours/Money owed for nothing in return

From the business perspectice services rendered previously is "nothing", because you can't get any more value from that

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Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by miranda_rights on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @02:04PM (#19201770)

People are technically already paid for their unused PTO when they leave a company with an allocated PTO/year (although this may vary between states). That was one of the reasons why I chose my current company, because I figured I'd make a little 'extra' money leaving after a year without taking any PTO. Personally, I did end up feeling a little burned out so I opted to actually start using my PTO, but it's nice to have the freedom either way.

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