The people’s case for unlimited PTO
Erin Parkins | December 6, 2021
Paid time off (PTO) policies are being closely scrutinized as American companies attempt to win the battle for talent during a massive labor reckoning. (I refuse to say “labor shortage” when the federal minimum wage hasn’t changed for 12 years.) If PTO policies are in service of employees, why is the conversation about unlimited PTO centered on how it benefits companies? It’s time to talk about PTO differently and make the case for unlimited PTO from the employees’ perspective.
Why PTO Exists and Who It’s For: A Reminder
As a career product marketer, I’m constantly asking two questions about any project I’m involved in: 1) Who is this for? and 2) What do we want them to do? This is the framework any business uses when thinking about meeting the needs of their customers. We aim to deeply understand their pain points, emotional drivers, motivators, etc. and connect those to the behavior we want from them.
Why not apply this to internal customers, aka employees, when thinking about PTO?
The primary audience for a PTO policy is the employee. The employee is the end user and a company’s HR leader is the buyer, who operates in service of the user.
The goal of PTO policies is to encourage rest. It’s not to create the most competitive comp package, it’s not to improve employee retention, and it’s definitely not for good PR.
If your PTO policy doesn’t focus on the employee as the primary persona and encouraging rest as the primary goal, it’s time to overhaul it.
The Current (V. Weak) Case for Unlimited PTO
The talking points I’ve seen to-date about unlimited PTO focus on how it’s good for business. As an employee and end user of PTO, these all get a big, fat eye roll from me and here’s why.
It saves the company money and time.
It’s well established that unlimited PTO saves a company money, both because they don’t have to keep cash on hand to pay out vacation and because they’re not spending HR personnel time managing a time off system. This is a great talking point to use with your CFO but saving the company money is a fringe benefit of PTO policies. It’s not directly tied to policy goals, which should be to encourage rest and better work / life balance.
It helps the company attract and retain talent.
Retention is good for everyone, as long as a company has a realistic retention goal and a holistic strategy that extends beyond the comp packages. But turnover can be good too! Expecting people to stay with you “indefinitely” is not good for business. If you practice a growth mindset with your business, bringing in fresh eyes and ears is critical, as is letting people walk when it’s time for them to move on. I think you can also make the argument that policies like unlimited PTOI are becoming table stakes and not actually the differentiator you think they are.
Employee productivity increases.
Why is American business so obsessed with productivity? Personally, as a high-performing Enneagram 1, I’m over here trying to be less productive and find stronger balance in my career. The push for people to produce more and better and faster and and and is unnecessary and exhausting. As a team leader, I don’t care about increasing productivity; I care about increasing quality and employee happiness, both of which suffer when you;re always trying to increase productivity.
Employees take less time off.
Let me clear here: people taking less time off with unlimited PTO is a problem to solve, not a benefit to reap. It’s not enough to implement unlimited PTO if your people don’t feel like they can actually take time off, and that feeling is driven by culture not policy.
Not only are these benefits irrelevant to me and my time off needs, they reinforce that company policies should be rooted in measurable benefits to the business instead of employee happiness. Sometimes you do the thing because it moves a metric in a positive direction and sometimes you do the thing because it’s the right thing to do. If you have to sell your leadership team on unlimited PTO by using these kinds of metrics, they probably care more about the optics of unlimited PTO than the realized benefits for their employees.
The “Cons”
Bear with me through this unbearable list of bad things people say might happen to a company when they implement unlimited PTO.
Employees might abuse the policy.
Yup, they might. So what? As an employer, you are not the keeper of an employee’s decisions. You can only respond and react, so have a plan for how you’ll define what abuse of the policy looks like and how you’ll address it. The definition is key: do you really care how many days someone takes off if they’re consistently delivering against their goals? If I can get my job done in 30 hours a week instead of 40, why shouldn’t I? And if I can get my job done in 45 weeks instead of 52, why shouldn’t I? The pandemic-era workforce is more remote and distributed than ever, which means time at work is no longer a realistic measurement of employee contributions or success.
PTO can no longer be used as a reward.
To this I say: sure it can. It simply requires a shift in mindset for team leaders. Instead of: “Thank you for your hard work on this, please take an extra day off whenever you want this month” it becomes: “Thank you for your hard work on this, please take this Friday off to celebrate and rest.” Unlimited PTO gives leaders more opportunity to encourage or even require time away from work when they sense it’s needed because it’s not an exception to the policy, it’s part of it.
Vacation schedules might overlap too much.
I honestly can’t with this one. If having too many people on vacation at the same time is detrimental to your business operations, you’re asking too much of your people and your PTO policy is not the problem. The expectation for immediacy in American business has gone too far in the internet age. Most of us work in business environments where, let’s face it, we’re not exactly saving lives. Your client / team member / partner can wait an extra day or two for a response so you can properly rest.
What these downsides to unlimited PTO have in common is they assume a level of mistrust between employee and employer. Employees will take more time off than appropriate, employers will stop rewarding team members, and employees will leave the business short-handed. All it takes to move past these concerns is conversation and expectation setting.
Moving to Unlimited PTO
Why should we move from accrual-based PTO to unlimited PTO? At first I wanted to dig into how we got to this point, where companies decide how much time off a person can take, but then I realized I don’t actually care how we got to such a wrong place. I’m certain the answer is rooted in white supremacist patriarchy, as are all systemic issues in this country, and that’s the extent of the historical context I need. Instead, let’s talk about why accrual-based PTO is wrong for employees.
People are whole beings with varying needs.
We don’t have the same personalities, health issues, family dynamics, home life, etc. yet have the same access to paid time off. My childfree, dual-income mountain town life is not the same as a single parent living in an urban area, yet most PTO policies treat us the same. An equality-based PTO policy gives everyone the same amount of PTO; an equity-based PTO policy allows for differences in paid time off based on need. The only equity-based PTO policy that doesn’t “other” those in greater need is unlimited PTO, where employees decide what their time off needs are and aren’t required to justify them.
Only the employee knows what their rest needs are.
Accrual-based PTO policies give a company control over when an employee can take time off and how much time they can take. Why is this their decision? Why must we earn time off in relation to time worked? My anxiety shows no consideration for how long I’ve been at a company before deciding to flare up and debilitate my brain for the day. Yet my ability to take a paid mental health day off is completely reliant on my tenure with a company. I should not have to earn rest in the eyes of my employer; only I know what a healthy balance of rest and work looks like for me. Let me make decisions based on my knowing instead of your policy.
The invisible labor of negotiating whether to take time off is costly.
I just started at a new job recently and have already spent literal hours talking about my PTO and figuring out how to meet my needs within our company policy. I don’t want to / shouldn’t have to think that hard about how I’m going to rest and I certainly don’t want to think about how I can still get paid while I rest. I carry a lot of privilege that has helped me get to a salary range where I can afford to take unpaid days off if I don’t have the PTO accrued. Most aren’t in this situation so accrual-based PTO policies often force people to decide between a needed day off and the full paycheck required to make ends meet. The weight of financial decisions like this is heavy and distracting but can easily be alleviated with unlimited PTO.
An important consideration for moving to unlimited PTO is managing how you roll this out to tenured employees who have diligently banked their PTO over the years in order to get a fat payout at the end of their time with the company. Tenured employees don’t want to give up their accrued PTO, so don’t make them; pay it out. They earned that time per your company policy, you’re required to have that cash on hand, and you can’t shift it to spend on something else. Eat the one-time cost in favor of establishing a more people-first policy that will strengthen your business and culture long-term.
Creating a Culture of Empowerment: A New Case for Unlimited PTO
Since policy means nothing without supporting culture, we should really be talking about unlimited PTO as a tactic underneath a broader company strategy: to create a culture where employees willingly give their best because they’re empowered to implement a work / life balance that meets their individual needs.
How do we begin to do this? I’ve never worked in HR and can’t lay claim to winning strategies for company-wide culture initiatives. What I can say, as a natural leader and career team-builder, is that culture is best driven by practice and communication from leadership.
Lead by example.
Your people don’t benefit when you’re drained and operating as a shell of yourself. Take the time off you need and talk openly about why you need it and how it helps you.
Normalize celebrating vacation.
We often talk about colleagues’ vacation as a challenge that prevents us from moving work forward. We’ll have to wait until next week since so-and-so is out, we need to do this now before they go on vacation, etc. Normalize celebrating vacation instead of lamenting about being down a person. Post in Slack wishing someone a happy time off. Have them share vacation photos when they return. Ask the rest of the team when they’re taking vacation next. The way we talk about policy is powerful; if your people hear you talking about it like it’s total bullshit, they’re gonna think it’s total bullshit.
Encourage days off.
Good leaders focus on managing the whole person and not just the person’s body of work. Make vacation chat part of your regular 1:1 meetings. Ask your people: When’s your next planned vacation? Are you taking time off after [abc big project]? Many times I ask this and the response I get is “I’m just too busy right now to take time off”. Don’t accept this response. Being “too busy” to rest is a top indicator that rest is needed. Ask them: What projects make you feel like you can’t step away right now? Then find a way to change the narrative around that project and let your employee rest.
Require days off.
Recognize when your people need a break and make it happen if they don’t. After a challenging project, give them a dedicated day off. As Product Marketers, my team and I have one particularly exhausting time of the year - sales meeting season. I once went to five sales meetings across four continents in four weeks. It’s brutal for us, so the last Friday of sales meeting season is always a free day off for my people, and I also encourage them to plan vacation after.
The TL;DR
Let’s stop asking: How much time off can we afford to give our employees? And shift to ask: How do we empower our employees to rest and recharge when they need it so they have the best experience with us?
We should not negotiate with our current PTO policies. Throw them out and start over. Start by asking: What’s best for our people? Then: make. it. happen.
WE ARE TIRED.
And we’ve been tired since before Covid. This is not a flash in the pan need, it's the future of the American workplace.
LET US REST.
And let us choose when we rest. Stop making us earn it. We’ve earned it by simply existing.
Erin is one of the four co-founders of The Honeybee Collective, an employee-owned and community-driven sustainable cannabis company. She’s a career team-builder and strategic marketing leader with a passion for workers’ rights and people-first business practices.