I work for a government agency. We have different rules for taking and earning different sorts of time
1- annual leave (vacation) We earn 1/13 of our annual entitlement (anywhere from 2-4 weeks, depending on seniority) each four-week timesheet. Theoretically, taking annual leave must be approved in advance. Carries over from year to year, up to a 300 hour limit
2- sick leave - earn 5.5 hours per timesheet. Used for illness, family members illness,doctor’s appointments. Requires a note in certain circumstances Carries over with no limit.
3 personal leave- 5 days per year, given on the employment anniversary date. Advance notice not required. Does not carry over.
4 holiday leave- earned by working on a floating holiday (a legal holiday for which state offices don’t close, like Election Day)Must be used before that same holiday the next year. Requires advance approval
Where I work they stopped dividing up the time off into different categories and it’s now all combined under Paid Time Off (PTO). I can see from several other posts this happens elsewhere, too.
I get about 28 PTO days a year, and because I’m hourly and not salary I can use them by hour and not by full day. (Salary have to use them in whole day increments). This is good for if you need to take off early to go for a doctor check-up and only need to leave an hour or two early. And, the less you are sick and the more you try to schedule things on the weekend the more of the time you can use for vacation. And, of course, people use the time for religious holidays.
There is also an option, if you’re, say, leaving early or coming in late a particular day, and know about it in advance, of working extra other days so you either don’t have to use PTO or not as much - the catch is, due to labor laws management can’t ask you to do it this way. The employee has to take the initiative to request this. And management doesn’t have to agree.
With a month of paid leave my deal isn’t too bad, where it gets to be raw is if a company only offers, say, 14 or 15 total PTO days.
In addition, the company gives “paid leave” - if the officie closes due to horrific weather, or goes to reduced hours, they usually pay you for the time. Or, for instance, on Sept 11 when we all bailed out of the skyscraper we work in and huried home we were compensated for the hours lost to a “national emergency”. Not all companies do this here in the States, it’s entirely up to the management to do this since they are in no way obligated to be this nice.