Either because the 'forcing mechanism of use it or lose it' is gone OR the social pressure like you mentioned.
Other countries also have rules for things like "every employee must be able to see a window" and whatnot.
Some companies do unlimited vacation like this. It's a perk.
Other companies use this to be restrictive on the vacation people take. It keeps more people working more days.
This speaks a lot to company culture.
My current job offers a few "extra" things on top of unlimited PTO like during the summer, a $100 bonus if you post a pic of some activity you did on PTO (literally anything, and can even opt out of sharing if you are so inclined) or more recently, a "competition" for the best use of PTO. I think someone reading a book in a hammock won.
I was cynical, but year later I'm pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong - I think we collectively all took 15% more holiday. Not a mind-boggling change, but not the "we'll all be bullied to stay at our desks" result I'd anticipated.
Anecdotally I think the largest change is people get less precious over guarding their holiday as a precious resource, even if they've no idea how they'll spend it. You finish your week's work on Friday morning? Ask if anybody needs anything from you and then just take the rest of the day off. No compulsion to find some busy-work and protect 4 hours of vacation.
As a manager I’d also hate this - it’s another thing that I would have to keep track of and weigh. I don’t want to have to discuss with people about how much PTO is okay! That’s something somebody else should decide!
If a company really wants to give people flexibility they would give X days of paid vacation plus as much unpaid as your manager will approve. Best of both worlds IMO.
Addendum: The company I work for has a “once in a lifetime opportunity” policy where if you want to do something special, like climb Everest or take a cruise around the world or whatever, they’ll work with you to figure out how to make leave work for it. It’s not actually once in a lifetime either, the policy says once every five years or so. I like that idea a lot, even if I’ve never used it.
It's so easy though, just default to yes. Is there a critical deadline coming up? Are they productive and focused at work? Then just always approve.
IMO these policies should be banned at the Federal level. I worked at a company with such a policy previously, I ended up only taking 3 weeks of vacation over the course of a 2 year stint. As it turned out, other coworkers would take 6+ weeks per year. There was no canonical guidance on appropriate PTO.
In a large company, this will translate to some managers granting excess PTO for retention purposes - and other managers burning people out. It's also an effective ward against parents and others with responsibilities which do not align with whatever the delivery of the month is.
> won't get paid out for remaining balances when they quit
You can just change the company handbook to say that unused PTO is not paid out, I don't think any state (fact-check me) requires you to pay out unused PTO (you're required to follow a policy fairly, so you must pay it out if the handbook says you pay it out)
In some states, all PTO was immediately removed from the bank as of the change date and those folks immediately moved to unlimited.
In MA, removing accrued PTO wasn't possible, but it was possible to rewrite policy to disallow carryover from one year to another, so people MA stayed on the normal plan until Jan 1, at which point they'd have 0 PTO due to nothing carrying over and they'd be moved to unlimited.
In CA, neither option was allowed, so folks remained on the normal plan until Jan 1, and then were paid out for unused PTO and then moved to unlimited.
I love it, and my manager has never rejected a PTO request, it’s just a formality. I took more than the UK standard 25 days in my first year and we haven’t talked about PTO once.
In fact, sometimes people say stuff like “oh I’m gonna go to $place for two weeks and I’ll just work in the daytime and vacation in the evenings and weekend” and management will actively encourage just taking the time off and enjoying it, coming back refreshed instead.
At both my current and last employer, we had unlimited PTO and employees were encouraged to use it, the only requirement being that they get their work done.
At my last employer, most people took 8-10 weeks off/year in the U.S. office and 12-16 weeks off in our European offices. At my current employer, people average 4-8 weeks and people who don't take at least 4 weeks off a year are gently encouraged to spend more time away from work. In both cases, PTO is not discretionary except where the employee's job specifically involves working on-site for a specific project or event and PTO would overlap with that period.
I think it's a good thing but we pay it with our lower average salaries.
They also facilitate hard to identify discrimination, including on prohibited bases, and enable social pressure to reduce total time off taken.
And none of those effects are accidental.
This is just one anecdotal example though so it's hardly proof that these programs work. I'll just say that if the managers set the culture appropriately then it can work.