jelloshots4all
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Post by jelloshots4all on Aug 13, 2015 11:46:49 GMT -5
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The Captain
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Post by The Captain on Aug 13, 2015 12:05:42 GMT -5
GE had forced ranking until very recently where if you fell in the bottom 10% two years in a row, you're done for. I don't think that kind of culture is going to change overnight into something warm and fuzzy.
On an individual level I don't have a problem with it. You meet your deadlines and get your work out and I don't really care how much time you take off.
On a Macro level it becomes much more difficult to manage. I can tell you that even on our floor there are huge differences per person in employee productivity. It's also pretty easy to predict who would look at (productive) employee A taking 4-5 weeks a year and thinking they're entitled to 4-5 weeks a year even when they are nowhere near as productive.
Then you have to start developing metrics and tracking productivity on an employee by employee level to protect yourself against lawsuits because of course you have to be discriminating for some reason if you don't treat everyone equally.
Honestly, I can't see it working for large groups of people. When I managed over 30 people at a company with a manager controlled flex and comp time policy it was a nightmare. Different people have different levels of what is considered "reasonable" and without set parameters it's difficult to manage that.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2015 12:20:58 GMT -5
No. It would never work here. There's way too many people. The production floor would come to a screeching halt and scheduling would be a nightmare. As it is they can't find enough people to work and are on a OT rotation schedule. In the office it would be a little easier to deal with, but there seems to be two groups up here, the ones that burn up every hour as it's accrued and those that hoard it and are forced to burn near the end of the year or lose it. I'm willing to bet the "burners" would just take advantage. The hoarders I'm not sure. It might work for a lot of them. Myself, I hoard out of fear. Fear that I'll take a vacation in March or April and then come October daycare will have a bunch of closings or my kids will get sick and I'll have none to take to stay home. If I knew that I could still cover those unexpected things later in the year it would make vacation planning a lot less stressful. But, then again, why should I get more days off because I have kids?
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Aug 13, 2015 12:22:53 GMT -5
The second job I had, I had unlimited sick time and unlimited vacation time. Like The Captain said, the consensus was that as long as you did your work, they had no problem with you taking the time. In the 5 years that I worked there, I don't ever remember it being abused.
The company I worked for did not have a large number of employees, maybe about 200 max.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2015 12:34:31 GMT -5
No way, another the production floor could be shut down. I doubt it would work for the office staff, a few bad apples would ruin it for everyone.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2015 12:52:43 GMT -5
No way, another the production floor could be shut down. I doubt it would work for the office staff, a few bad apples would ruin it for everyone. this kind of thing confuses me. Why would a production floor be shut down? why aren't bad apples fired? Because there would be people gone all the time. There is no "work hard and get your work done and you can take off" on the production floor. It basically requires X number of bodies every day. And we are ALWAYS short as it is.
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hoops902
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Post by hoops902 on Aug 13, 2015 12:54:23 GMT -5
No way, another the production floor could be shut down. I doubt it would work for the office staff, a few bad apples would ruin it for everyone. You don't even have to worry about bad apples, because a production environment like that probably means you can NEVER take time off and "still get your work done". Your work is essentially "be at your job and work the production floor". The premise of it doesn't really apply to people who work hourly for the most part (for example, you can't make sandwiches at Subway and get your work done if you're on PTO, you can't just premake them so you're all caught up on the day you want to leave).
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Aug 13, 2015 12:55:45 GMT -5
There's "the policy" and then there are what managers and co workers actually expect. I read that in cases of "unlimited leave" employees actually take less leave. They are self conscious about it and don't want to let others down.
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hoops902
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Post by hoops902 on Aug 13, 2015 13:02:25 GMT -5
There's "the policy" and then there are what managers and co workers actually expect. I read that in cases of "unlimited leave" employees actually take less leave. They are self conscious about it and don't want to let others down. That's probably how I'd be. I have about 30 PTO days this year, I've used 5 so far. There's no such thing as "get your work done", there's just a constant string of projects and less formal initiatives to work on. You get done with one, you move to the next. Many rarely have deadlines, we're just trusted to work on them as we have time. It would be difficult to both hold people accountable and figure out for yourself when is too much really too much.
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Angel!
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Post by Angel! on Aug 13, 2015 13:02:49 GMT -5
It could work here, but they would never institute it. Right now we have the “I don’t care when you work, as long as your work gets done” policy mentioned in the article. The salary folks even have personal time that isn't limited (similar to comp time when you work over 40, but there is no official tracking). I've worked my share of 35-38 hour weeks using the personal time.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2015 13:11:02 GMT -5
Because there would be people gone all the time. There is no "work hard and get your work done and you can take off" on the production floor. It basically requires X number of bodies every day. And we are ALWAYS short as it is. but isn't time off requested and approved? If someone was always calling off last minute - why are the not fired? Well, for one thing. I live in a town with 2% unemployment. You don't get fired unless you are really, really bad because there isn't much to choose from out there. Yes, time off is requested and approved, but if it's unlimited, then that kind of implies you can take as much as you want right? AS MUCH PAID TIME OFF AS YOU WANT? Sure, they can say only X number from each department can have off each day, but the production floor would be booked up for time off the entire year! Trying to actually take one would be rough because you could never get a spot.
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yogiii
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Post by yogiii on Aug 13, 2015 13:14:34 GMT -5
It would work because most people have a hard time using their PTO as is, so it gets to the end of the year and everyone needs to take the month of December off or lose it. If it was unlimited, people would still work the same and wouldn't feel like they were losing it.
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emma1420
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Post by emma1420 on Aug 13, 2015 14:12:26 GMT -5
It wouldn't work where I work. Well it would work for my department and perhaps one other, but organization wide it wouldn't.
we have too many people who would abuse that sort of policy. We get tons of PTO as it is, and we already have an issue with our receptionist taking off every Monday because she finds sorting the mail to be too stressful. I suspect about 20% of our staff would abuse that sort of policy, because they don't really care if their work gets done or not. It's also why no one is allowed to work from home regularly because when we had that policy it was horribly abused (which sucks for those of us who didn't abuse the policy).
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Aug 13, 2015 14:40:03 GMT -5
The reality is that vacation tracking just turns into a task for each individual manager, instead of HR or accounting. Part of the policy is that time off is "reasonable " and approved by your manager. Most managers are going to think reasonable is the average of what everyone took last year, give or take a couple days. If the manager starts approving 90 days of vacation per year, he isn't going to last long.
This is an accounting decision to get the vacation accrual off their books and avoid the vacation payout when someone quits.
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hoops902
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Post by hoops902 on Aug 13, 2015 14:43:41 GMT -5
The reality is that vacation tracking just turns into a task for each individual manager, instead of HR or accounting. Part of the policy is that time off is "reasonable " and approved by your manager. Most managers are going to think reasonable is the average of what everyone took last year, give or take a couple days. If the manager starts approving 90 days of vacation per year, he isn't going to last long. This is an accounting decision to get the vacation accrual off their books and avoid the vacation payout when someone quits. The simpler solution to that would be to simply stop vacation accrual and payout. Personally I think it's a lot more about implementation in instances where you have highly motivated employees who will take less time off than they otherwise would in a limited time-off environment.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2015 14:48:37 GMT -5
No way, another the production floor could be shut down. I doubt it would work for the office staff, a few bad apples would ruin it for everyone. You don't even have to worry about bad apples, because a production environment like that probably means you can NEVER take time off and "still get your work done". Your work is essentially "be at your job and work the production floor". The premise of it doesn't really apply to people who work hourly for the most part (for example, you can't make sandwiches at Subway and get your work done if you're on PTO, you can't just premake them so you're all caught up on the day you want to leave). There is office staff where I work that is hourly. The production plants I have worked at are also the corporate offices with most of the companys functions. For the office staff I think it works for a lot of employees but then I think of a few people that are good employees but need guard rails and would run a train on an open ended PTO policy which would be an extreme headache for management, not bad enough to fire but bad enough to cause those headaches.
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lexxy703
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Post by lexxy703 on Aug 13, 2015 14:49:59 GMT -5
I'm one of the ones who doesn't use all the vacation time already allotted. Not because I'm that dedicated to my job but because we are a very small company & only one employee at a time can have time off. My coworkers pretty much grab up the prime times & then what is left is my busy season. So at the end of Sept-Nov I scramble to take 4 day weekends just to use it up. I would not be happy if we went to unlimited. I can think of two who would use the unlimited to the detriment of others.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2015 14:51:51 GMT -5
Because there would be people gone all the time. There is no "work hard and get your work done and you can take off" on the production floor. It basically requires X number of bodies every day. And we are ALWAYS short as it is. but isn't time off requested and approved? If someone was always calling off last minute - why are the not fired? There are usually policies for this but the people abusing it know how to get themselves within a hair of getting fired and then they fall in line until they can do it all over again. I learned so much getting into management, a lot of the assumptions I had about how things work were tossed out the window.
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emma1420
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Post by emma1420 on Aug 13, 2015 15:00:09 GMT -5
but isn't time off requested and approved? If someone was always calling off last minute - why are the not fired? There are usually policies for this but the people abusing it know how to get themselves within a hair of getting fired and then they fall in line until they can do it all over again. I learned so much getting into management, a lot of the assumptions I had about how things work were tossed out the window. Or they know how to work the system to make the employer scared to fire them. Our receptionist got a doctors note for taking off Monday's due to the stress of the mail. We have another employee who they won't fire because we are fairly sure she would sue (for what I don't know but I'm sure she'd find something).
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imawino
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Post by imawino on Aug 13, 2015 15:01:17 GMT -5
There are usually policies for this but the people abusing it know how to get themselves within a hair of getting fired and then they fall in line until they can do it all over again. I learned so much getting into management, a lot of the assumptions I had about how things work were tossed out the window. Or they know how to work the system to make the employer scared to fire them. Our receptionist got a doctors note for taking off Monday's due to the stress of the mail. We have another employee who they won't fire because we are fairly sure she would sue (for what I don't know but I'm sure she'd find something). Are you freaking kidding me?? Did anyone check to see if that was a real doctor? Is this sick time? What happens when she runs out?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2015 15:06:05 GMT -5
Or they know how to work the system to make the employer scared to fire them. Our receptionist got a doctors note for taking off Monday's due to the stress of the mail. We have another employee who they won't fire because we are fairly sure she would sue (for what I don't know but I'm sure she'd find something). Are you freaking kidding me?? Did anyone check to see if that was a real doctor? Is this sick time? What happens when she runs out? We have three buildings on our campus. We had one employee freak out when she found out she was going to be transferred from the West to the East building and she also got a doctors note that this would be too stressful for her. It worked, she got to stay put, but the next RIF she was out the door.
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imawino
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Post by imawino on Aug 13, 2015 15:07:58 GMT -5
I don't think I understand the point of an "unlimited" vacation time policy. Of course it's not truly unlimited - you can't just stop coming to work and keep getting paid. It's a reasonable amount of time off, right? So, just offer employees a reasonably generous and defined amount of time off and avoid the confusion and varying interpretations by each manager in an organization of what constitutes reasonable. I guarantee you that anyone whose reaction is "that's a GREAT IDEA" is planning to take off way more time than they have now.
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imawino
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Post by imawino on Aug 13, 2015 15:08:57 GMT -5
Are you freaking kidding me?? Did anyone check to see if that was a real doctor? Is this sick time? What happens when she runs out? We have three buildings on our campus. We had one employee freak out when she found out she was going to be transferred from the West to the East building and she also got a doctors note that this would be too stressful for her. It worked, she got to stay put, but the next RIF she was out the door. Did she freak out if someone touched her red Swingline too?
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sarcasticgirl
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Post by sarcasticgirl on Aug 13, 2015 15:13:49 GMT -5
right now if we had unlimited vacation time... I'd come in about once a week. it's a shitshow here lately!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2015 15:24:52 GMT -5
We have three buildings on our campus. We had one employee freak out when she found out she was going to be transferred from the West to the East building and she also got a doctors note that this would be too stressful for her. It worked, she got to stay put, but the next RIF she was out the door. Did she freak out if someone touched her red Swingline too? LOL No. She's a production worker so none of her own office supplies, but they can be hard to uproot and move because it's like telling them to go work for a different company. They have to leave all their friends and probably learn some other skillset. Find a new "spot" in a different lunchroom. Seriously, it causes quite an uproar when they start shuffling people to a different building. That's the first one I knew of to actually get a doctor's note for it though.
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emma1420
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Post by emma1420 on Aug 13, 2015 15:26:48 GMT -5
Or they know how to work the system to make the employer scared to fire them. Our receptionist got a doctors note for taking off Monday's due to the stress of the mail. We have another employee who they won't fire because we are fairly sure she would sue (for what I don't know but I'm sure she'd find something). Are you freaking kidding me?? Did anyone check to see if that was a real doctor? Is this sick time? What happens when she runs out? Nope. We don't have sick time, we have PTO. She uses her PTO and when she runs out each year then they give her the option of unpaid leave. Amazingly when the leave is unpaid she gets over the stress most of the time and shows up on a Monday (she typically runs out of PTO by November). The bigger issue is because she covers the phones, it means the other two customer service staff can never be out on a Monday, because only one of them can be gone at a time. i suspect no one checked if it was a real doctor. I live in a city with thousands of doctors, and I suspect they are afraid she will sue if they challenge her on this (especially as the note probably does come from a real doctor). If we had unlimited leave I bet that the doctors note would be revised so she needed to take every Monday and Friday. She complains about the stress of the higher volume of calls on Fridays.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Aug 13, 2015 15:31:01 GMT -5
It wouldn't work where I work. Well it would work for my department and perhaps one other, but organization wide it wouldn't. we have too many people who would abuse that sort of policy. We get tons of PTO as it is, and we already have an issue with our receptionist taking off every Monday because she finds sorting the mail to be too stressful. I suspect about 20% of our staff would abuse that sort of policy, because they don't really care if their work gets done or not. It's also why no one is allowed to work from home regularly because when we had that policy it was horribly abused (which sucks for those of us who didn't abuse the policy). I'll bet if she was cut to part-time, she'd find sorting mail to be not as stressful as not being able to pay her bills. Or losing her benefits.
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Tiny
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Post by Tiny on Aug 13, 2015 15:33:58 GMT -5
No way, another the production floor could be shut down. I doubt it would work for the office staff, a few bad apples would ruin it for everyone. this kind of thing confuses me. Why would a production floor be shut down? why aren't bad apples fired? Because sometimes the Bad Apples are pretty good employees - they just like to complain and often have a weird sense of what's fair.
Back in the day - when the department I was working in decided to try 'flex time' (a couple of the women with kids going to day care AND a crappy train schedule). One woman wanted to come into the office at 8:00am and leave at 4:00pm, another wanted to come in at 10:00pm and leave at 6:00pm.
This wasn't all that bad... it actually helped our department would have 'longer coverage' from 8 to 6 (more or less). Coverage was mostly just 'face time' - not actual 'work' at 5:55pm or at 8:05am.
Worked great - but then the complaints started - "well so and so LEAVES at 4:00pm! why can't I leave at 4:00pm?" Answer: you didn't come in at 8:00am - if you want to leave at 4:00pm then lets see if your job is doable from 8-4". Reply "OH NO! I can't possibly come in at 8:00!! but I want to leave at 4:00! It's not fair that I have to work til 5:00pm.... whine whine whine." Or the "So and so comes in at 10am!! I want to do that too! it's not fair!!" Answer: "Well, it looks like you, too, could come in at 10:00am - but you'd need to leave at 6:00pm." Reply: "OH NO! I can't leave at 6:00pm!! That's too late!! It's not fair!!! vhine whine whine".
Sometimes the bad apples are the 'busy bodies' who pay more attention to what other people are doing than what THEY are doing... They often don't get fired because they don't ever really 'cross the line' into the zone of 'fire-able employee'. They just make life a living hell for everyone else.
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emma1420
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Post by emma1420 on Aug 13, 2015 15:42:58 GMT -5
It wouldn't work where I work. Well it would work for my department and perhaps one other, but organization wide it wouldn't. we have too many people who would abuse that sort of policy. We get tons of PTO as it is, and we already have an issue with our receptionist taking off every Monday because she finds sorting the mail to be too stressful. I suspect about 20% of our staff would abuse that sort of policy, because they don't really care if their work gets done or not. It's also why no one is allowed to work from home regularly because when we had that policy it was horribly abused (which sucks for those of us who didn't abuse the policy). I'll bet if she was cut to part-time, she'd find sorting mail to be not as stressful as not being able to pay her bills. Or losing her benefits. Well of course. Another employee went part time this summer, and she was busy asking how that worked because she might want to go part time as well. When she found out there was a pay cut involved she got over that thought (she's not the brightest bulb in the box).
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Aug 13, 2015 15:43:27 GMT -5
That's so bad for morale.
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