Pros and Cons of PTO

40% of employers now offer a PTO plan, but how do you know if it’s right for your organization? Here are some of the pros and cons of PTO vs. segmented leave policies.

These days, many of us are just an email, text, or click away from work. So it’s more important than ever to make sure you and your employees are getting time away to recharge. Increasingly, that’s coming in the form of PTO or Paid Time Off, an integrated system that combines traditional vacation, sick leave, and personal leave.

Pros

Flexibility: Employees like the flexibility of PTO, which allows them to adapt their paid time off to their needs.

Transparency: Employees are not incentivized to lie about being sick in order to use all of their paid time off, creating more transparency in the employer/employee relationship.

Efficiency: Employers only have to track PTO hours, as opposed to tracking hours separately for vacation, sick and personal days (unless required by law).

Cons

Higher Utilization: Employees are more likely to use all of their PTO, whereas they may not have used all of their sick or personal days in the past.

Illness: Employees may come to work when sick in order to save up PTO for extended vacations.

Liability: In California, Illinois, and Massachusetts all earned PTO must be paid out upon separation of employment.