Andrew believes Superior’s current time off policy creates an incentive for empl
ID: 369748 • Letter: A
Question
Andrew believes Superior’s current time off policy creates an incentive for employees to call off at the last minute. She has learned from supervisors that many employees use their sick days to take care of personal business such as attending parent–teacher conferences or running personal errands. These are often events that could be prescheduled time off, but employees do not feel they have a time off option to address such needs. Sick days can’t be prescheduled, and vacation days are often already committed at the beginning of the year. Joan believes that changing the time off policies could reduce the number of unscheduled absences, but she is not sure if her idea will address her concerns. She is considering replacing the current vacation/ sick day allowance with a paid time off (PTO) bank. Employees would receive 12 PTO days each year. They would be permitted to schedule preferred days off at the beginning of the year so that they can make vacation travel plans, and the remaining days could be saved for days when the employee is ill or could be scheduled ahead of time to take care of personal business. Joan believes this change will encourage employees to schedule their time off in advance when possible. With advance notice of absences, supervisors will be better able to plan projects and meet deadlines.
Beyond reducing occurrences of unscheduled time off, are there any other benefits to offering PTO?
Explanation / Answer
There will be other benefits of offering the PTOs to the employees. These benefits are as follows.
1. It will increase the productivity and efficiency as advance notice of leave will help the organization to make the employees to be multi skilled and another person will take-up the responsibility when somebody is on leave.
2. Ascertaining the need of a particular type of training given to the employees so that planned absence can easily be compensated.
3. Employees going on leave will have added motivation to complete the task of those days when they are on leave. Such dedication will come because the organization has given them the facility of PTOs. Hence, the absence of employees will be less pinching.
4. It will facilitate HR planning in terms of additional manpower required to compensate overall absence.
5. Ascertaining the probability of taking leaves by any employees by studying the number of PTOs left, the pattern of PTOs being taken and the other trends related to the scheduled leave applications. It will help the organization to plan new policies, that are beneficial for the organization as well as employees.