I work for a company that has, paid holidays, paid sick days, paid vacation days, and three paid floating holidays.
What purpose does singling out three days as floating holidays serve? Why not just bump the number of days defined as vacation up by three?
-rainy
The last company I worked for offered floater days. Essentially, they offered 12 off-days per year; 9 of them were statutory holidays, while the rest were floaters one could take whenever they wanted/needed to. They’re quite handy in case you need to take a day for something – renewing a license, getting a physical, or just taking a “mental health day.” It isn’t a mandatory thing as far as I know, but rather just a nice gesture – a fringe benefit – the employer offers to keep their employees happy.
Why not roll it into your vacation? I don’t know how it worked in your company, but in the one I worked for, it was probably because they didn’t have to pay for unused floaters.
Some states require that earned but unused vacation days be paid to an employee upon termination (or the company policy states thus, even if the State doesn’t require it). The State law doesn’t apply to untaken holidays, though, and probably the company policy doesn’t either. So it can be cheaper for a company to offer floating holidays. Also, they likely do not allow unused FHs to be carried over to the next year, while they might for vacation days.
New Jersey at least did not require floating holidays be paid.
When I had them, they were from the manufacturing part of the company where vacation days had to be approved well in advance, while floating holidays could be used for emergencies at short notice. My part, which was research oriented, treated them the same.
When I left AT&T in the buyout from the trivestiture, I had to be off roll Jan. 15. They gave me (and then paid me for) all five weeks of vacation as of Jan. 1. They would not pay for floating holidays, so I was hardly there for my last two weeks. At least this bit of mismanagement worked to my benefit.
We get “floating holidays” because I work at a library that is not closed for certain holidays that other government agencies are closed for, and we are “owed” these holidays. What you’re talking about sounds different, though.
I always assumed this was a compromise for non-Christians. No one should be required to take vacation days to celebrate (in my case) Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Yet it’s not fair for me to get three days off that others do. Although this is effectively the same as having to take vacation days, it somehow doesn’t have the sting of yet more suffering for my faith.
Can I hijack this thread for a question of my own?
At my company, you can only rollover as many vacation hours as you earn - that is, if I’m at the 80 hour earning level, then I can carry over only 2 weeks of vacation over into the next year. Any above and beyond that, I have to either use or lose. This is where my question comes in - is this legal, the lose part? I was under the impression that it was either “use or be paid for;” I didn’t think they could legally take something away from you that you had accrued. Course, it’s not like you don’t have plenty of time to come up with a solution, but still.
I tried some searching today for MN statutes, but had no luck.
I never thought of that!
It’s not just religious holidays. At one company where I worked, one Italian-American manager insisted on taking Columbus Day off. Or perhaps you want to attend the parade on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day but it’s not a company holiday.
It’s definitely legal in MA. Not sure about other states. But I think it’s a common practice (and I’m sure legal); I get various newsletters addressing this topic and they are nationwide publications, not specific to any one state.
I think missbunny nailed it. It’s a way of cutting down on the amount that companies have to shell out for severence pay.
That’s also why in many organizations you can accumulate as much sick leave as you want, but have a cap on vacation time. If you end the fiscal year with more vacation time than you’re allowed to carry over, it gets recategorized as sick leave time. When you retire/resign/get the axe, they have to pay you for unused vacation time, but not the sick leave time.
And on overhead. At the last company that gave me floating holidays, if you didn’t take your vacation within the year, it rolled over into the following year. If you didn’ t take all your floating holidays within the calendar year, you were SOL. The smart thing to do was use up the floating holidays first, then start charging vacation, excuse me, Personal Time Off, as this company was crappy enough to bundle vacation and sick days together and call it Personal Time Off.
You still have floating holidays? They are given because they don’t have to be paid if you leave your company and typically don’t roll over to the next year.
Most places are now using PTO (Paid Time Off). Where there is no distinction between a vacation day or a sick day. But be prepared to lost some overall time, the justification for this is that most people don’t use all of their sick days. At the end of the year they don’t roll over, but can be applied to Short Term Disability if needed in the future. I lost two days time off when I first switched to PTO, my company at the time figured of our 7 sick days the average taken was 5.
I had some friends whose companies applied the same logic about personal/floating holidays.
This was back in 2002, three years and two companies later I haven’t seen a place that doesn’t offer PTO instead of traditional vacation/sick time.
I’ve worked for two government contractors. The last one only had PTO days, with no floating holidays. The current one has from 2-4 floating holidays, depending on some mysterious calculus having to do with how many regular holidays we get (I think.) It also has separate vacation and sick days. We lose any remaining sick days at the end of the year, but are given 6 new ones on Jan 1. Vacation time used to roll over, but this year they are paying it off, unless you make a specific request to use it by a particular date next year. For example, I requested my vacation time to rollover until Jan 30, in case I needed it for as yet unscheduled medical procedures. If I don’t use it by Jan 30, it will be paid off.
There’s nothing in Federal wage and hour law about vacation use or lose with the exception of some nuances in Service Contract Act and Davis Bacon Act covered federal contracts.
Here’s a booklet written by the MN government in cooperation with a regional law firm. Page 74 has a summary of your question–if it’s communicated, sounds like a use or lose policy is valid in MN.
The company I last worked for had paid sick days, paid vacation days, paid holidays, three paid floating holidays and five paid excused work days (EWDs), two of which could be taken in two hour increments. One floating holiday and one EWD could be company designated (such as Good Friday and Christmas Eve). Floating holidays and EWDs could not be carried over to a new year.
The only difference between floating holidays EWDs was the incremental use clause. Sixteen hours of EWD could be taken in two hour increments. For instance, if you needed two hours for a doctors appointment you did not need to take the entire day off. This was nice when we were working overtime. By taking an EWD we still received overtime pay. Floating holidays were useless in that regard.
My company only gives one floating holiday a year. I used mine at Pesach, so I had to take a freaking vacation day for Yom Kippur.
Still a little grumpy about that.
Well, good to know. I was thinking about raising a stink, but it seems I don’t need to. Thanks for the answers, all!