I work for a small employer. I was trying so hard to save my leave time to take week’s vacation (5 working days) later this summer. But, as they say about “the best laid plans”, I had to burn what I saved for medical reasons. If I ask to take LWOP, what are the pros and cons from the employer’s perspective? Yes, they’re down a man, but I am saving them money. Just trying to second guess what the odds are for getting such a request approved.
Naturally, yes, it is true: Sooner or later, I will have to bite the bullet, submit my request, and accept my destiny. Ooh, I hate living in limbo, but ultimately…it is what it is, right?
If you are not there, does production suffer? That is, if you are not there will they need to get someone in to cover for you? Or can you make up your work both before and after you leave?
I would tell your employer that they will save money by not paying you. If you’re not making them more than you cost the vacation might be longer than you hope for. Have you already paid for this vacation or is it a one in a life time opportunity? If not you may wnt to consider that life happens and shit on your vacation plans rather than ask your employer to see if they really need you around.
My employer is happy to let me take days off without pay as long as the timing works out (like, it’s not when everyone else who could reasonably handle my duties is out). I’ve never had a vacation or unpaid leave request denied. But yeah it’s going to depend on a lot of specifics.
If you have a reasonable relationship with management, I’d just ask if it’s an option. You had planned to take some vacation, but had to take your paid leave to deal with a medical issue. I wouldn’t necessarily do any more prep than you would for a normal vacation request. How would your duties be covered when you’re on vacation? They’ll probably mostly be covered the same way.
Lots of employers recognize that vacation is useful for productive and happy employees and that those benefits aren’t really realized by taking time off to be sick.
I’m a little confused. You wanted to take vacation but the money you set aside had to go to something else. Now you want to take the time off without pay? Why?
It wasn’t money that was set aside that went to something else, it was the paid time off that was being saved for a vacation and went to something else. (apparently illness) The OP doesn’t mention money at all.
Example- let say I get 15 PTO days per year. I took a week off ( 5 days) in February and I want to save 5 for a vacation in the summer. But I get sick in March and end up using my remaining 10 days of leave. Now I have no leave time left for the summer, but I still want a vacation. Some people can afford a week or two off without pay and some employers will allow them to take it for vacations ( Pretty much every employer will allow some unpaid leave for medical reasons.)
I would check to see if your company has a written policy on LWOP to get a definitive answer before you start asking questions. But please note, even if they don’t have a written policy on LWOP they may be able to take adverse action if you don’t show up to work when you’re supposed to. At my company employee’s may receive warnings for going LWOP which results in a loss of pay and incentive bonuses for the quarter. (LWOP for FMLA reasons do not result in adverse actions on our part of course.)
None of us can predict the odds of you having LWOP approved. I would suggest you do not argue that you’re saving the company money by going on LWOP. Your presence at work adds value to your company, otherwise why are they paying you at all, and from an employer’s point of view your absence will place a burden on other employees as they have to pick up the slack. Yeah, that burden would have been there if you had the PTO to cover the time off. But you’ve already used that PTO.
And I don’t know how much PTO you had to burn because of illness, but it’s a good idea to build up a bank of PTO if possible. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen employees use most of their PTO as they get it only to get burned when one more minor emergency pops up and they only have 3 hours of PTO in the bank.
Without knowing what you do for a living, we can’t possible know how your employer will receive such a request. ‘Saving money’ likely won’t be their first consideration - you are salaried, your salary is in the budget. More likely, consider what, if any, inconvenience your time off will cause.
Will they have to bring in freelance resource to cover your absence? Because if that’s the case, your time off will cost them more, not less.
There’s a reason holiday time is limited - it’s because you are needed in work. Recognise that taking additional time off isn’t doing them any favours, and try to mitigate any fallout your absence may cause.
IMHO, most companies are biased against LWOP. Even in situations where it makes sense, a lot of corporate cultures feel that even asking for LWOP is kind of an offense on the employee’s part*. But we don’t know your company’s culture.
If I had a decent relationship with my boss, I’d ask them informally whether short-term LWOP in this situation is at all considered an option in your organization. If they say No, then that’s that, and if they say Yes then you can find out how much of a detailed proposal to prepare. If my boss thought that even briefly and informally raising the issue was a sign that I’m dangerously entitled, disloyal and free-thinking, well, I guess I’d not raise it but spend a lot of work time polishing my resume.
I think the corporation both dislikes the feeling that it’s not in strict control of the worker’s time (even though the corporation would approve LWOP) if any employee can just up and decide to not work for a while; plus it’s offended that the employee isn’t achingly grateful for every moment they can spend working for the company and so feels that they’re disloyal for wanting to work less.
Strikes me as odd, that the OP had to use “vacation” leave for “sicktime” absence. That makes me question the likelihood of his small employer having a well thought out policy regarding LWOP (which I’ve always heard pronounced as 2 syllables - “el-wop.”)
Many employers are “biased against LWOP” because they have valid reasons for wanting to know who they can expect to be on duty at what times, and it can complicate payroll/timekeeping. Sure, the type of business and the OP’s position are critical factors.
With a small employer (presumably not height-challenged ;)), I can see it going either way. If it is the “We consider ourselves family” type (often used as lipservice but exceedingly rare in practice IMO) then they want you to be happy and are happy to work out whatever suits you so long as the work gets done. Or, in a small business, margins and staffing might be tight, causing them to expect predictable attendance.
File this in the “no harm in asking” category.
Also, from my time representing management, employees run all manner of schemes regarding leave abuse. Tho you may think your reasons entirely justified, there is good reason for many employers to be critical of unusual leave requests.
As a sidenote - I remember when I first heard of the concept of “advanced sick leave” Simply never crossed my mind that it was a thing. But it turned out a whole bunch of employees (for my VERY LARGE employer) were running negative leave balances. Many of them had burned their sick leave for non-medical reasons, and then were fucked when they actually had a real medical emergency.
The OP doesn’t actually say that vacation leave was used for sicktime - it says " save my leave time to take week’s vacation " . Lots of places don’t distinguish between “sick leave” and 'vacation time" . It’s all in one bucket of PTO. If you get 10 days of PTO per year, and you spend three weeks out recovering from surgery, there’s no PTO left for vacation.
This, exactly – I have worked for companies where vacation time and sick time are in two different “buckets,” and I’ve worked for companies where both types of paid time away from work come out of the same PTO pool.
That’s why combined PTO is so shitty. You either end up with people using their time being out sick, with no opportunity for recreation (if they’re altruistic), or you end up with people saying “Fuck this, I’m not burning MY vacation because I have a cold”, and end up infecting the entire office with diseases because they don’t want to stay home.
Better to separate them, so people don’t have to make that choice. Neither of them is good for employees in the long term.
But it’s good for the bean counters and cheapskates who run most companies, so that’s why we’re seeing it more commonly than in years past.
People say this - but the first one really only matters at the rare employer that provides a lot of sick time and/or lets sick time rollover. If you get two weeks vacation a year and two weeks sick time per year with no rollover , taking four weeks off recovering from surgery puts you in the same position as if you got 4 weeks of PTO in a single bucket. Either you had surgery/recovery before you took any vacation and get paid for the four weeks after surgery but get no vacation ( because most places will allow you to use vacation leave if you run out of sick leave) or you had the surgery after you took vacation and end up taking some of your recovery time unpaid.
My company lumps it all together, and for me, this is good. I left my last company with months of sick time I didn’t get compensated for. I’m never sick. If I have an extended illness, say surgery or cancer, after the first week’s PTO it automatically rolls over to short-term disability at 90% of my pay.
I get 31 days of PTO. I can take a week of vacation every other month. Otherwise I might get 2 weeks of sicktime that’s never used and 4 weeks of vacation time.
