What's the difference between paid time off and sick leave and when should I am taking each?

| Sunday, November 6, 2011
By Zoria Mills


Paid Time Off

Paid time off is a bank of hours from which staff can draw. Employers credit extra hours to their staff "banks", typically each pay period. Most US bosses offer their employees 10 paid vacations, 2 week vacation, two personal days, and eight sick leave days each year. Under a PTO plan, the employees would be credited with thirty days paid time off as an alternative. On a bi-weekly pay schedule (twenty-six pay periods each year) workers would accumulate an extra 1.3 days of PTO every two weeks. Where a semi-monthly pay schedule is utilized (pay days on the 1st and 15th of each month) workers accumulate 1.25 days PTO on each of the twenty-four pay periods.

What's Good About Paid Time Off?

The concept is good. Make your company more tasty to possible staff and make it easier to keep current employees by increasing the amount of days they can take off from work and still get paid. Since most employees are healthy and don't use all of their sick leave, why not allow them to take the difference as extra vacation time. There isn't any cost to the company and the employees are more happy. How could that be bad?

What's Bad About Paid Time Off?

A Paid Time Off programme invites abuse. Since a company no longer knows why a worker requires time off, and officially does not care why, employees are gone more often. While this can be controlled rather by requiring previous approval for any PTO, employees who never used their full allotment of sick leave will definitely use all of their PTO every year.

Sick Workers Not Using Sick Leave

One of the most pricey abuses of PTO is sick employees not using sick leave. Many staff begin to view all paid time off (PTO) as vacation time. So when they're sick, they don't want to spend any of their "vacation" time so they come to work and spread germs. This makes other workers unwell and productivity drops as more of the work force gets sick. Other employees may be worried that if they say that they are sick, that they'll suffer job discrimination due to it.



Sick Leave Pay

Many U.S. Bosses offer sick leave pay. Some even offer accrued sick leave pay when employees quit or get fired. But there are no state laws that mandate sick leave pay, according to Nolo.com. It's precisely voluntary* for employers. They sometimes offer it as a benefit to draw in and keep staff.

If bosses do offer sick leave pay, then workers have entitlement to it, if they comply with the terms and conditions in related policies or employment contracts. Since it is a voluntary benefit, employers may be the boss. As an example, by policy, your employer can need you to submit a doctor's note to get your sick leave pay. However , if employers don't apply their sick leave policies solidly to all staff, "cheated" employees might be well placed to sue.

Under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), you may be entitled by Fed law to take almost twelve weeks of sick leave for your own or a family member's sickness, without losing your job or group health benefits. However , the Act does not need your employer to supply sick leave pay. Your state could have a corresponding law that changes the Fed Act.

In April 2005, the Healthy North Americans Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate. If the Act becomes Federal law, it'll require employers to provide yearly paid sick leave advantages to employees who work at least 1500 hours in a year. This article will be further updated if the Act becomes law. In the meantime, get extra info about the outstanding new law here.




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