We all need a break now and then. If you want your employees to be healthy, productive, maintain high morale, and enjoy working for you, then you need to consider every detail of the vacation policies that you will offer. Not only are some expected, but some may also be enforced by law depending on where your business is located. Currently, there is not a U.S. federally mandated requirement for businesses to offer paid time off policies but each state has different requirements.  If you live outside the U.S there could be other laws that you will need to look into. Every location is different. 

Some studies show when employees can take breaks throughout the year, they sleep better, are healthier, happier, and more productive. 

Not only will you have healthier and more productive employees, but you will also attract more sought after and higher-skilled talent to work for you. An attractive vacation policy can be a great recruitment and retention tool. Also, It is much more expensive on average to recruit new talent than to retain your current employees, so it is important that you find policies that work for you and your employees. 

There are many different types of policies that different businesses offer. There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to deciding what works for your business. You have to consider the industry and environment that is unique to your company, so you can ensure your business needs are met. It is important that you clearly state what type of leave that will be available in your employee handbook, in your tracking system (if you have one), to new employees, as well as educate your HR team.

Different Types Of Leave

Here is a list of the various types of leave that you can offer:  

• Vacation Time
• Sick Leave
• Holidays
• Bereavement
• Pregnancy
• Paternity/Maternity
• Adoption Leave
• Adverse Weather
• Personal Leave
• Community service or volunteer work
• Attendance at parent/teacher conferences
• Administrative leave
• Temporary Disability Leave
• Voting
• Jury Duty
• Compensatory Time (Compensating for extra hours worked)
• Military Leave

Keep in mind this list is not all encompassing. There may be other types of leave that you could provide that would be beneficial to your business or unique situation.

Time Off Policies

There are 3 common ways to accrue and allocate time off for your employees:

Traditional Time Off

This type of policy gives a certain amount of hours or days to each type of leave. They can either accrue as the year carries on or be allotted year by year. The amount of time provided can be based upon how long the employee has worked there, their position and seniority as well. Typically the amount of time incrementally increases as the employee stays with the company.

PTO Banks

PTO banks take all the allotted time for each kind of leave and put it all into one bank. This can be easier to track for some companies but can also leave out information on what type of leave is being used which gives less insight into patterns and trends.

Unlimited PTO

More and more companies are now giving their employees an unlimited amount of PTO. This can be attractive to new talent, however, it then leaves the amount taken up to manager discretion which can make things more complicated for morale. It can also make some employees more fearful of taking much needed time off as they are now guessing how much time is acceptable for productivity.

How Do You Keep Track Of It All?

Now that more and more employers are offering a dizzying array of perks and leave policies it can be more difficult to track everything necessary when it comes to HR needs.

Microsoft Excel has been traditionally used as a way to track paid time off and leave for employees. This tool has been widely used for years because of its ability to complete formulas to calculate hours. However, it has become a tool of the past in this regard, now that real-time updates, cloud-based software and the ability to track large teams have become a priority and necessity for keeping everything up to date, efficient and accurate.

With CWS Software, you can find solutions that are fully intuitive, customizable, and accurate. The TimeOut solution allows for any variation of leave policies, automatic balance calculations and easy to use request and approval processing.  The TimeOut timesheet module adds web-based time tracking for hourly employees. The timesheets can be automatically sent to managers for approval, then submitted directly to your existing payroll system in any format required.  

For more info, visit https://cws-software.com/TimeOut/