My employer is switching over to a unified bank of time off next year. I rarely use sick time either because I don’t get sick very often or I still work from home when I’m a little under the weather. I have 20 sick days banked that will simply vanish on Jan 1.
Would you call in sick more often knowing that you will otherwise lose that time? Or just accept the change without issue?
As an HR person, I’m not a fan of separate sick days and would much prefer the PTO bank. I understand that people will still get sick and use some of their sick days for that purpose, but sick days taken by someone who isn’t sick and just wants a day off are disruptive in a way that planned days off are not.
At our company, PTO days are not questioned, you can use them for whatever you like, but we do ask that employees who are not using them as time off for being ill please give us some notice so that we can cover your shift, or parcel out your work.
It is working well for us here. People are far more likely to call in on the morning of only if they are truly ill and the overall production numbers reflect this.
It won’t carry over to the unified bank? Everyone who had vacation or sick time accumulated starts at zero?
If so that is screwed up - that it time you earned they are taking away. You should be compensated in some form, even if it is a cash-out or something.
Under the circumstances, probably. Doubt that I’d burn anything close to 20 days in a couple of months, but I’d likely take a few mental health days.
With the policy change, your employer is telling you that calling in sick is the same as taking vacation… so follow their lead.
I would absolutely use those sick days. I’d also schedule any kind of routine doctor’s appointment that I could between now and Jan. 1, and I’d take the entire day of the appointment off - i.e., go to the doctor at 8:00 am and go back to work the next day. Don’t give up paid time off without compensation.
I prefer a single time bank, since employers typically don’t allow you to roll over banked sick time.
If under the current system sick days are for use only when sick, and you have vacation/PTO time under a separate system then you’re not “owed” those sick days. Presumably, if you didn’t get sick you’d never use them, so there’s no reason to use them between now and Jan 1.
It’s not like you were planning on getting TB in late November to use up your sick days. No harm no foul. Under the current system is there a limit to the amount of sick time you can accumulate? I’ve never worked in a place where sick time carried over to the next year.
My sick time is banked. Currently I have 108 sick days banked. This carries over year to year. Why would I want it any other way? What if I actually have a major illness? I’d want them then.
That being said, a use it or lose it policy ensures I use it. I still have 5 vacation days I need to use up before the end of the year. I plan to use them all.
We do get to roll over or keep all our unused sick days. It’s great. I’m even able to use those days to look after my mom since she broke her hip.
There was talk of changing over to straight PTO, and we nearly had a rebellion. Lot’s of people would lose a lot of sick days that they have accumulated.
I also agree with Enginerd.
We instituted PTO about a year ago, I’m fine with it. I didn’t feel I was owed sick days, the company has a very liberal policy for time off already. Since we are an international company this was done largely to bring us in line with our overseas offices which have work on the PTO basis for a long time.
At my place of employment, I am entitled to sick days. I earn X number of sick leave hours per pay period, they accumulate up to 300 days (at which point you can donate the extra to a sick day bank), and when you quit you get paid for the sick days you haven’t taken. I like this system. We also accumulate annual leave hours at a slightly slower rate and those hours accumulate indefinitely. On top of that, we’re granted X many personal days per year depending on how long you’ve worked here, but these days are “use it or lose it”.
I suppose for me the only distinction is there have been plenty of days when I was legitimately not feeling well but chose to work from home instead of calling in sick. And when I “work from home,” I am actually working and available for pretty much the full work day.
That’s totally on me, I get it, but now if I’m under the weather for whatever reason I think I’ll be much more likely to claim a sick day.
I’ve never worked in a place where they didn’t carry over.
Do you get the full allotment of sick days for the year on January 1? What happens if you come down with the flu in February?
I don’t really have a strong opinion either way. Once we are fully transitioned over to PTO, I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s the details of the transition that I think are a little sketchy. I (of course) would prefer that they offered some sort of compensation for people who are ‘losing’ sick days.
Where I work, a person banks vacation time with each pay period. This accrued leave rolls over from year to year. But everyone gets the same amount of sick leave. If you use more than this allotment, then you have to eat into your vacation leave.
I like this arrangement just fine.
A schedule of sick/health days separate from PTO/vacation days tends to get abused, on purpose or not. It is a bad practice.
My former job was very corporate for a dozen years or so. Generous 20 paid vacation days plus 2 weeks of sick/health days. You could use the sick days in half day increments for things like a doctor or dentist appointment, or if needed, a real sick day off. I used a couple days a year. And of course took most of my vacation. My work ethic just wouldn’t allow me to call in sick when I just felt lousy for no reason.
There were several people with either poor immune systems or poor work ethic who managed to use all those sick days. So they had added 2 weeks paid time off each year. And if you were so foolish not to use these extra days off, you were a chump. The reward for the other employees who used only a few sick days was…nothing.
So later we went private, non-corporate again and the managers who bought the place instituted a policy where at the end of each year any unused vacation days AND any unused sick days were cashed out. At the end of the year right before the Christmas shopping season. Mine was always a nice bonus check.
You would be astonished at the general health improvement of the staff! It was like we cured cancer! Employees were no longer deciding that going to work today was a bad idea. And no, this did not increase the number of sick people coming to work.
I am unfortunately back in a different work atmosphere where those who take advantage of the sick time can treat it like extra vacation days and those who work get nothing.
Accrue the paid time off, either vacation of sick leave and pay accordingly. If you use it you are covered, if you don’t you have days and money in the bank. It is the only fair way.
Banked sick days encourages people to come to work when they are sick. That’s not the only consideration, and surely moving from banked sick day scenario to a combined PTO is a reduction of benefits, but I prefer a single bank of PTO.
The downside is that people are then more likely to come in to work when sick, rather than use up precious PTO days. This of course makes them more likely to infect others. Also when converting from sick+vacation to unified PTO, I have never seen a case where the total wasn’t significantly fewer days.
And yes, some people do abuse sick leave.
There’s pros and cons to both methods, different laws in different states can affect how much better one is than the other. In general, though, I prefer to just have one pool of PTO; hell, I’d prefer to have vacation and flex time in there too.
The benefit of separate sicks days is that, in general, they can’t tell you no. Maybe they can require a doctor’s note, particularly if you do it often or several days in a row, but if you’re sick, you’re sick. I’ve seen situations where it’s all one pool, someone requests a day off and it’s denied precisely because they have to control for people calling in last minute, whether sick or because they didn’t bother to plan it. But if you have to schedule it ahead of time to use it then, unless too many people have also requested it, you’re good to go. That’s the problem with the single pool, it sort of creates the opposite incentive to never let them know until the day of over risk of getting denied.
That all said, I still think the benefits of a single pool works better. As long as it’s not abused, there’s no reason to deny people a called in day, sick or otherwise. If certain people are abusing it, create special rules for them, like requiring a doctor’s note, and let everyone else just keep going as usual. The benefits are obviously that if you don’t get sick, or can work from home when you are, you get more vacation days or you can save up some and use them in an emergency if you do get really sick to cover until you can get short-term disability or whatever.
And like I mentioned above, I’d like to actually have holidays and flex time built in too. Sometimes I’ve had to work on holidays and then I need to go through extra hoops to use that day later. I’d rather just let it be left to me to use the day off when I want. Or if I need some extra time off earlier in the year, I can use it then and either repay it with what would have been vacation later or take no pay later. Either way, more flexibility.
And the same for flex time. It’s annoying if something comes up at the end of a pay period, particularly if there’s a lot of overtime one period and some needed time off on another one. Obviously probably needs a certain amount of oversight, but some days I’m able to stay busy well past my 8 hours, and if I know I’ll need a day off for something the next pay period, I may rather have the vacation time than straight pay, or worse un-comped overtime.
Either way, my advice to the OP is to just see how much of the sick leave you can reasonably use up by the end of the year. When’s your next dentist appointment? Make one in the next couple months. Have you had a physical lately? Maybe a day where you would want to take off but would typically work, like allergies or a cold, you can call in. I’ve known plenty of people who will use vacation for that sort of stuff. And, IMO, if it’s yours to use before the end of the year, there’s not any ethical issues with using it, as long as you’re not dishonest, like calling in sick then just sleeping in and going to a movie.
Correct. What I did was take a whole day off for a routine appointment, rather than just a hour.
The single pool means that sickos will come in and infect everyone else. :mad:
I don’t see this where I work. Since we have plenty of days to use, we use 'em if we are sick. I don’t mean banked as if we ever get paid for them. They are just saved up. You ‘lose’ them when you leave. It doesn’t encourage people to come in when they are sick. Quite the opposite in fact.
Exactly. People are more likely to work when sick with PTO.
And yes, when it was suggested where I work, I was going to lose some 700 saved up sick days. Lot’s of people where going to lose hundreds of days. Doesn’t seem like we really abuse it. It’l real nice for an extended illness or accident though.