Sick day or vacation day? With PTO, it doesn’t matter

Paid time off relieves stress of accountability

At small businesses this summer, many owners won’t be trying to figure out whether employees will be counting it as vacation time, personal days or sick leave when they send texts or emails that say, “I’m not coming in today.”

A growing number of companies combine vacation and sick time into one bucket called paid time off, or PTO. Staffers decide whether they’re going to use the days for vacation, when they or a relative is ill, or for family events.

“You’re saying to staffers, it’s PTO, just take it. If you have a sick kid, need a personal day, you’re really stressed out,” says Gretchen Van Vlymen, a vice-president at StratEx, an HR consulting firm based in Chicago.

Forty-three per cent of U.S. companies offered PTO in 2016, up from 28 per cent in 2002, according to a report from World at Work, an association of human resources professionals. The report said 51 per cent of private companies, which would include small and mid-size businesses, offered PTO last year. The report was based on a survey of the organization’s members.

One of the biggest pluses about PTO for small business owners is eliminating the administrative chore of tracking how many sick days versus vacation days their employees have used.

For Will Gadea, offering Paid time off may not stop those staffers who habitually call in sick on Mondays or after long weekends. PTO to his five staffers means he doesn’t have to be the arbiter of whether someone is really sick when they call him in the morning.

“I don’t want to make employees lie to me,” says Gadea, owner of IdeaRocket, an animated video company in New York.

But PTO isn’t a panacea for time-off issues. It may not stop those workers who habitually call in on Mondays or after long holiday weekends. And some staffers may decide to work when they’re sick rather than use days they want to set aside for vacation.

Employers need to deal with such situations from a performance perspective, says Kate Zabriskie, CEO of Business Training Works, an employee development consultancy in Maryland. That means talking to workers if they come in sick to let them know they’re probably better off at home.

Van Vlymen suggests starting a conversation with the staffer who tends to call in after weekends, noting there’s a pattern and letting them know that if they have a problem of some kind, help is available.

Occasionally, an employee runs out of PTO. It can happen if they take vacation time, some personal days for school events or to be home with sick children, and then come down with the flu at the end of the year.

When a staffer is running out of days, especially if it’s a highly valued employee, it can be tempting for the boss to say, “Don’t worry, we’ll pay you for the days you missed.” But unless other employees also get extra days, the boss’ leniency can be seen as unequal treatment, something that can become evidence in a discrimination lawsuit.

“You need to remain consistent. You can’t look the other way for one person,” says Eric Cormier, a consultant with the human resources provider Insperity.

One solution is to let sick staffers telecommute to avoid using PTO.