What’s Better? Vacation or PTO? Both? Neither?

The following article was first published on Shipman & Goodwin attorney Dan Schwartz’ Connecticut Employment Law Blog. It is reposted here with permission.

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When blogs first came out, the author might put out a proverbial “Gone Fishing” message to let readers know that they’ve gone on vacation. But with the rise of scams, some of us (ahem) just announce vacations AFTER we already had them.

While I was away, I ended up pondering a few employment law issues and trying to make sense of it all without the press of work. I’ll have another post or two on some of those thoughts, but one such topic actually relates to vacation.

There was a time a while ago where employers would just give employees say two-three weeks off as vacation and call it a day. If someone needed to take a sick day, they could do that too.

Then sometime more recently, employers started just using the concept of “paid time off” to track all such time (though schools and some industries were notable exceptions). Some even started moving to “unlimited PTO” with the notion that so long as employees were performing their jobs, they could take time off (within reason, of course).

But with various states like Connecticut passing paid sick leave laws, the notion of PTO got to be more complicated again. For the first five days of time in Connecticut, most employers have had to follow the rules in place for the paid sick leave which meant things like no documentation.

Now is a good time to do so without the year-end madness that is typically associated with such a review.

And since that time could be used for a “mental health day,” I’ve been hearing from employers again as to whether another change is in order.

The short answer is probably “no.” No wholesale changes are probably needed for employers in Connecticut but a lot of this depends on where your employees are located. Employees in California are entitled to have PTO carried over and “banked” so there needs to be additional guardrails on place in that state and in some others.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t review your policies to make sure they are current. You can look at whether you have PTO and whether employees can take paid sick leave (if eligible) using your PTO.

Do employees carry over such PTO? Are there limits?

Now is a good time to do so without the year-end madness that is typically associated with such a review. And once you do so, contact a lawyer to make sure your policy is well-drafted and avoids some legal landmines too.

Oh, and be sure to take your vacation. There’s nothing like a beach and a book (and maybe a cocktail if you’re so inclined) to recharge your batteries.

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About the author: Dan Schwartz is a partner at Shipman & Goodwin and has decades of experience solving complex, employment law problems for companies.