Paid time off gains small-business adherents
NEW YORK — 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 percent of companies offered PTO in 2016, up from 28 percent in 2002, according to a report from World at Work, an association of human resources professionals. The report said 51 percent of private companies, which would include small and midsize 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. That can be particularly helpful in the growing number of states, counties and cities where employers are required to allow staffers to accrue sick time, usually up to 40 hours a year depending on how many hours they work. With PTO, there’s no need to track hours worked or accrued.
For Will Gadea, offering PTO to his five staffers means he doesn’t have to be the arbiter of whether workers are really sick when they call him in the morning, coughing and asking for a day off.
“I don’t want to make employees lie to me in order to use those days up,” says Gadea, owner of Idea-Rocket, an animated video company in New York.
But PTO isn’t a panacea for time-off problems. 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 a vacation.
in the U.S. as a Frenchman. Undoubtedly, these comments were directed at Trump. Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, delivered one of the most hard-hitting comments when he stated that Trump’s stance and the U.K.’s impending exit from the EU “have proved to be great unifiers for the European Union. There is a renewed sense of confidence in Europe after the French election, the apparent retreat of populism, an increase in economic growth and the prospect of Ms. Merkel’s re-election in September.”
Views on the results of the summit strongly diverged. After its conclusion, Trump tweeted: “The G-20 Summit was a great success for the U.S. — Explained that the U.S. must fix the many bad trade deals it has made. Will get done!” Most political and economic observers noted how isolated the U.S. had become among many of its previously close allies.
I sensed that the other G-20 members performed the proverbial “rolling of the eyes” when the subject of U.S. stances on trade, climate, and immigration were discussed. U.S. presidents in their first term can stumble and look awkward as they learn their job and jostle for their place in the world order.
Every foreign trip brings an opportunity to build bridges with allies, seek rapport with adversaries and pick up experience. However, with two trips to Europe under his belt and a second bite at the apple to stabilize and foment U.S. relations with traditional allies such as the EU, Trump has widened the chasm.
In an ironic twist, Trump’s actions have served to unite the EU, but against U.S. positions. At this point, it is not clear whether future foreign meetings such as this one will help or serve to cause more angst and instability in the world.
The question many analysts are now asking is, “Do we now have a G-19 instead of a G-20?”