Re:Unlimited Vacation Days Is a Scam
by dragonwriter on Thursday October 07, 2021 @01:03PM
(#28789134)
Whether or not you take fewer days off, the actual point of unlimited PTO is that its not an accruable quantified benefit, so that when your employment is terminated (voluntarily or otherwise), you have no claim to compensation for it, whereas quantified accrued vacation must be cashed out (and is therefore carried as a liability on the firms books until used.)
But this is also why you will typically use less with unlimited: if you use too little of accrued PTO, the firm will either:
(1) have a policy with an accrual limit, which will encourage you to to use it or lose it, or
(2) have a must-use policy to limit the liability on their books, ehich will force you to use it, or
(3) take steps (possibly including incentives) to get people to reduce large balances, to limit liability on the books.
And, typically, they’ll have policies encouraging managers to approve requests (and give soft encouragement to take vacation) to people whose balances are approaching the point where the other measures would kick in.
With unlimited PTO, you not using it is a pure benefit for the employer with no cost, so they have no (narrow, short-term balance-sheet optimizing) reason to do anything but encourage it. Plus, in limited PTO situations, the fact of the limits themselves is a factor which encourages managers to be flexible with exercising the “business need” discretion they are generally given over approval in both systems—sure, maybe its a moment you really think Bob would be important, but by taking it now, the balance will be exhausted and you’ve got less chance of him even requesting leave for a while, so you can adjust. With unlimited leave, “business need” is the only constraint, so managers have a lot less reason (even before balance sheet concerns) to be flexible on it.
To the extent there is a broader benefit to the firm of employees taking vacation, management that sees it over the clear immediate costs of people getting paid for not working is rarely a reliable thing across all the relevant layers of management in an organization of any scale. Even if the environment is one where unlimited PTO works well today, there is very little guarantee that will be the case tomorrow.
But this is also why you will typically use less with unlimited: if you use too little of accrued PTO, the firm will either:
(1) have a policy with an accrual limit, which will encourage you to to use it or lose it, or
(2) have a must-use policy to limit the liability on their books, ehich will force you to use it, or
(3) take steps (possibly including incentives) to get people to reduce large balances, to limit liability on the books.
And, typically, they’ll have policies encouraging managers to approve requests (and give soft encouragement to take vacation) to people whose balances are approaching the point where the other measures would kick in.
With unlimited PTO, you not using it is a pure benefit for the employer with no cost, so they have no (narrow, short-term balance-sheet optimizing) reason to do anything but encourage it. Plus, in limited PTO situations, the fact of the limits themselves is a factor which encourages managers to be flexible with exercising the “business need” discretion they are generally given over approval in both systems—sure, maybe its a moment you really think Bob would be important, but by taking it now, the balance will be exhausted and you’ve got less chance of him even requesting leave for a while, so you can adjust. With unlimited leave, “business need” is the only constraint, so managers have a lot less reason (even before balance sheet concerns) to be flexible on it.
To the extent there is a broader benefit to the firm of employees taking vacation, management that sees it over the clear immediate costs of people getting paid for not working is rarely a reliable thing across all the relevant layers of management in an organization of any scale. Even if the environment is one where unlimited PTO works well today, there is very little guarantee that will be the case tomorrow.