UNLIMITED PTO: wellbeing improvement or cause for burnout?
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Description
Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO) is, as the term suggests, a vacation policy that allows employees to take as much free time as they want as long as it does not interfere with their ability to complete their work.
Most companies will still have rules for requesting PTO. The policy simply avoids putting a hard cap on the amount of time the employee can take in a given year.
Let’s look at some stats.
· According to a MetLife survey, unlimited PTO is the number 1 most valued emerging employee benefit.
· 72% of employees are interested in unlimited PTO as a benefit.
· 50% of US workers in the survey would prefer unlimited PTO over a higher salary.
As with everything, there is another side to the unlimited paid time off story.
Offering unlimited PTO won’t work in every business. The entire concept is based on autonomy, freedom, and trust so employees need to be able to perform under these conditions.
On top of that, it’s important to have a clear and comprehensive policy in place as well as a defined process for requesting and approving time off. If employees are confused by your policy or feel pressured not to take time off, this can lead to stress, resentment, and burnout.
In fact, various articles point out some of the main concerns regarding unlimited PTO:
· Peer pressure, a never-give-up warrior culture and an unwillingness to take vacation ultimately lead to employee burn-out.
· Unless managers encourage vacation, employees too often don’t take the days they should and eventually burn-out.
According to a 2020 Forbes article, a growing amount of evidence suggests that unlimited vacation days might in fact prove a fast track to stress and burnout.
And this brings me to our third and final statement of the day:
Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO) Policies Are a Scam and Lead to Employee Burnout.
