Paid Time Off vs Sick/Vacation

There are different ways to handle paid time off for employees. Traditionally Sick and Vacation time, and sometimes Personal Holidays, are tracked in separate categories. Sick time generally carries over from year to year and may or may not be paid on termination. Vacation time generally is capped in some way, and is usually paid on termination. Personal Holidays aren't all that common, and tend to be use-it-or-lose-it time.

There is an increasing trend to convert all of that into a one-size-fits-all category, Paid Time Off. PTO. Some companies do it well. Others use it as a dodge to try and reduce costs. Two examples:

Used to be 10 days vacation, unlimited sick time. Now it's 18 days PTO (for new employees like me), a 200 hour cap, and no cash out. I already heard a coworker complaining on the phone to HR, and saying that he's got 150 hours that he now feels he has to take. Our project schedules are going to change in a bad way if all the old-timers take a month or two off to bring their vacation balances down.

The bad way. All times are rolled into one, is capped, and isn't paid on termination.

ours works pretty well in it's current form. PTO includes your vacation time, a week of sick days and 7 holidays. PTO is accrued each pay period. unless your boss is concerned about how many sick days you take it isn't really tracked. the cap is 450 hours. when you hit the cap, you just stop earning more until you use some of it.

they also allow us to donate PTO to both the [company] foundation and United way during those fund drives.

you can get paid out for part of each year's accrual if you set it up during open enrollment, or use the value to pay for your part of your benefit plan. They also pay out for any unused PTO when you leave the company

This company is doing it right. I also know that the second company has a significant union presence, which may explain why their PTO policies are so old-timey. The first company is a tech company where the only union presence, if any, is in the janitorial staff; staff that in all likelyhood is contracted through another agency. The first company treats PTO as a cost to be managed, where the second company treats PTO as a benefit. Its a slight difference, but it makes a big difference in terms of what employees get.

Unions make a difference.