When an employee calls to say they woke up feeling like death warmed over, do you have to tell them to drag their butt to work because your company doesn’t have a Sick Time Policy? Or when you receive vacation requests, do you have to think twice about how to track it because your Time Off Policy is so complex? Unfortunately, many would answer yes to these questions because of inefficient Paid Time Off (PTO) Policies.
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Keep It Simple
As a benefit that many companies offer to their employees, PTO Policies are constantly evolving to accommodate the changes in the working world. However, many employers fall into the trap of overly complicated policies that are not only difficult for employees to understand, but difficult to track. Keeping a simple policy that will make employees happy and maintain effective workplace attendance is easier than you might think.
An accrual table based upon tenure is a simple way to track the amount of time an employee may take off. It fosters employee loyalty as they work to climb the ladder to achieve more vacation time, while the accrual method regulates how frequently time off can be taken by not awarding PTO all at once.
Charmaine Hollaway wrote a recent article addressing increased vacation time requests around the holidays. An organization can effectively manage such requests by creating a time off policy that incorporates the following:
- Place a cap on the number of days that employees may request during a vacation leave.
- Regulate the number of employees from within a department that may be out at any given time.
- Mandate how much notice employees must provide prior to taking vacation.
Simultaneously tracking a Vacation and Sick policy for employees can be further simplified by automating the accruals through your payroll service. Working with a professional employer organization like GMS makes this possible. Our HR Account Managers can help you design a policy that is tailored to your company's needs and we can automate the tracking to take that time-consuming task off of your plate. So the next time you look to update your PTO Policy, consider simplifying the process.
Quote Source: Midwest HR
Image Source: Call Center Comics