Seeking input from employees and bosses/managers alike.
I’m of the opinion that the French and Scandinavians are on to something with their lengthy vacation PTO and that the way Americans work 49-50 weeks out of every year in unhealthy, but then again I’m not a boss or manager.
Balancing the need for work productivity with the need for work/life balance, etc. It also depends heavily on the industry in question, too, of course.
I’d probably argue for at least six weeks. That’s one week every other month which seems like a decent mental health maintenance system. I could see an argument for a bit more, though there would certainly have to be some upper limit.
I tend to regard 3 weeks as the bare acceptable minimum. Frankly I wish there were a Federal law mandating that.
As a boss, I think a month off with pay is about right (and more time off than I take). I’m good with more unpaid time off too, if someone wants it.
I’m a boss, and I voted for over five weeks. My answer is based on my industry (project management) and I don’t need to have the shop manned every day. If everyone happened to take the same day off I wouldn’t mind, I work with professionals who know how to manage their time. Put me in the Service industry and my answer changes to less time off, but only because it would be harder for me to manage when I need to have a fully (or mostly) manned shop every day. Then again, good managers in the Service industry probably are able to handle such matters with ease. That manager just wouldn’t be me.
I am currently an underling. I spent 23 years in the Air Force, with a mixture of boss and underling.
I liked the military system: you earn 2.5 days of leave per month, starting after basic training. We could accrue 60 days (more, under certain circumstances). The basic rule was that you could only take 30 days at a time without the commander’s permission.
We could also take non-chargeable leave. For example: If I am flying out on Sunday and returning Friday evening, Sunday would be non-chargeable because it is not a standard duty day. Like-wise, if I was returning late on Thursday evening, I could end my leave at 1200 Friday, as I was reporting for at least half of my duty day. To prevent abuse, you could have one non-chargeable day.
I’m in the US and get 5 weeks vacation, 3.5 weeks sick and 13 holidays. It’s about right.
Part of me wants to say The more time off, the better (within reason). The other part of me wonders who’s going to pay for all this extra time off.
I’m not really sure what’s ideal. I look at it as part of compensation. Pay me more and I’m willing to work now. And the ability to flex time factors in. If I can move my hours around, I don’t need as much time off. I’ve also had jobs that let me sell vacation time back.
I get 31 days of PTO. I’m never sick. Combined with holidays, I can take 7 weeks off. I usually take of a week in March/beginning of April, when the weather’s nice. Then I take a week in June, to bushhog my pastures. Then I take a week around the 4th of July. A week in Sept., Oct, Nov, and the week between Christmas and New Years.
StG
I’ve been both a boss and peasant. I am not a big fan of paid vacation (my Dad was a steelworker who got 13 weeks every 5 years and it was not as good as one would think – I also work now for a company that allows no paid time off for base level employees) so I went 0-2 and leaning towards the 1 week mark. I would prefer something with more UPT (unpaid time off) more liberally granted but there is just something in me that objects to being paid not to work.
13 weeks every five years is not as good as I would think. It’s 2.5 weeks a year. Kinda sucky.
BTW, you’re not being paid not to work. You’re being paid to work and part of your payment is in time-off. It’s part of a complete compensation package, just like your health insurance isn’t some separate magical thing, but rather lowers the wages the company would otherwise offer. What you are doing with PTO is lowering your wages in exchange for not working as many days. It’s no different than only working 5 days a week rather than 7 or going home at the end of the day rather than staying at work 24 hours a day. It is accounted for differently, but it’s the same thing. I get a good amount of time off. I also get paid less than if I took a job with much less time off. It’s a trade-off. I’m not being paid to sit at home. I’m losing wages to do it, but I think it’s worth the money.
I guess having a day of paid time off that you can “sell back” is the same as not having it (but being paid for an extra day) and having the option to take it off unpaid. Someone will no doubt correct me if I’m thinking about that wrong. Psychologically it feels different (to me, obviously), e.g. that there’s more an expectation of taking the time off if it’s paid.
Before I retired, I was earning 26 days off per year, plus 10 Federal Holidays, plus 13 days of sick leave a year. Only one time in my working life did I take more than 2 weeks off together for vacation. I’d use my leave in dribs and drabs - either in conjunction with a holiday for a longer weekend or the occasional mental health day, just because.
Since we rarely went anywhere for vacations, it didn’t matter a lot to us. But I figure 4 weeks a year is plenty. I expect I’m an anomoly.
I’m a minion and the proper unit of measure isn’t weeks of vacation.
Those countries the OP admires do not give “X weeks vacation”, or even “Z days vacation”. What people there have is “Y hours to work”; depending on their working hours and calendars, this means different amounts of days off. Note that for this to work as intended, companies need to track time worked correctly, including overtime and compensation time.
When my father worked in a hospital as Purchasing Manager, he had to work the same total hours as the plumbers, the floor medical personnel or the emergency room personnel, but each of those groups worked different times, calendars and shift lengths. They could have widely different amounts of days off.
I am an American that has lived in Australia and now the UK
We don’t have a concept of PTO in the UK or Australia. We have annual leave and we have sick leave.
We are guaranteed in the UK 20 days of annual leave plus bank holidays by law in both countries, over and above sick leave.
I think this is just fine. Currently I have 27 annual leave days per year plus bank holidays plus six months full pay sick and six months statutory sick pay (which is not very much, but something.)
This is one of the reasons (along with health care) that I will never move back to the US.
I liked the military system as well. Except for the stupid “Start leave in the local area” and such rules.
In my current company, I get 6.67 hours of PTO earned every pay period, so that ends up being about 160 hours a year. Seems fair to me. No separate sick leave though.
What’s the difference?
The term PTO isn’t one I’ve seen or heard (let alone used) all that much (and I keep wanting to read the thread title as “How much PTSD for employees is ideal?”). Is it used more in reference to hourly wage earners as opposed to salaried workers? If you earn a certain amount per year, why would you specify that the “time off” you’re allowed is paid vs. unpaid?
I think PTO is often used by companies that don’t have separate paid vacation time and paid sick leave. All lumped in as one bucket. But I could be wrong.
I don’t know it it’s standard, but that’s how my employer uses it. I work in healthcare (in the IT department), so we’re a 24x7x365 organization. Everyone gets PTO, and you use that for all time off: vacation, sick time, and holidays; we get an ‘extra’ week of PTO to make up for the fact that we don’t get “holidays”.
I’ve been in my job for just shy of 20 years, so I’m maxed out on PTO accrual. I earn 42 days per year (8 weeks + 2 days), which is enough to take as many vacations as I can actually afford to go on, and still have plenty of time for the odd off-days for day-trips, or running errands, or ‘mental health days’.