Pros and Cons of Paid Time Off

Paid time off is a good management tool of recruiting and maintaining employees if employers ensure that it suits organizational culture of the company. Paid time off best applies in those organizations with higher degree of flexibility. Employers treat employees as adults who are mandated to have paid time off at their prudence without mistake. Employees usually value flexibility offered y paid time offs. Employers have diminished time that is spent micromanaging employees time (Peter, 2000, p. 64). Paid time off plan is easy to manage, implement and track because all days off are under the same heading.

With paid time off, employees gain privacy and flexibility. They are not supposed to inform their employers how they will make use of their time. There is no need of them to lie that they are sick to be given paid time off. Those employees who rarely use their sick days they can use their whole allotment on vacation (Mazullo, July 2, 1999). Cons Many employees abuse paid time off they view all paid time off as vacation time. Whenever they are sick they don’t want to spend any of their vacation time. This makes even make other employees sick reducing organization productivity.

Human resource managers are more concerned with the effect these vacations have on productivity, customer services, staffing and operating continuity. When employees are planning vacations they should notify managers and their human resource management department for clearance. This is important if employee wants to take a time off during those holidays which are common. This early notification enables mangers to make advance arrangement so as to reduce burden to those employees who will remain and reduce backlog when you go back to work.

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Vacation time is negotiable just like everything else. Employers who have adopted paid time off give employees fewer overall days than before with new employee accumulating paid time off slowly than those longer term employees. Employees view paid time off as a benefit and make use of their time off but this is not as in past. Employees see all paid time off practices as vacations and they come to work even if they re sick (Peter, 2000, p. 67). Splitting of paid time off to holidays, vacations and sick days is not all situations which qualify to be in one category.

Personal days are unexpected situations but this doesn’t guarantee an employee to be given a paid time off. Those employees who use their entire days on vacation they end up taking additional unpaid leave thus they get sick some time later in the year. The system of paid time off poses difficult in determining when an employee should take a time off for serious illness covered by Family and Medical Leave Act. Before implementation of paid time off plan, employers have to consider whether they are or not required by state law to pay all unused paid time off at end.

Under the old system, only personal days and vacations were supposed to be paid at end not sick days. Employees’ absenteeism is costly and makes organizations to lose a lot of money when its employees are out (Mazullo, July 2, 1999). Conclusion Paid time off is a policy that combines sick time, vacation and personal time as a single bank of days as part of employees’ benefits. It establishes a pool of days in which employees use at their discretion. When employee requires a time off from work, paid time off gives them mandate to take time off.

In order to protect customer service and work load of the organization, then employees request paid time off with a prior notice. Paid time off although they benefit both employer and employee they pose difficulties in the operation management of the business. This may affect productivity of the business thus a loss. Employees may fail to go for paid time off while sick thus spreading this disease to other employee and this is a loss to the business since it will have to give many employee a sick leave.

Implementation of paid time off requires a lot thus being time consuming. Mangers and human resource managers of each department have to be keen with this plan to ensure that the business doesn’t lose.

List of References

Eastern, J. , (2001), “paid time off,” Business Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 102-108 Hall, C. (2003), Taking time off, The Princeton Review, ISBN: 0375763031 Healthfield, S, (2009), Paid time off policy (PTO), retrieved February 9, 2009 from http://humanresources. about. com

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