Changing Vacation "year"

[Christine Itterly]

ok, here goes.  When I started working with my current company (almost 7 years ago), they used your starting date as the start and end of your 'year' in regards to counting vacation.  For example, I started on August 26.  After my 90 days, I "earned" 2 weeks (10 days) vacation/sick/personal time.  So for this past year I have from Aug. 26, 2003 until Aug 25, 2004 to use my time.  Once the time is up, you lose it.  

Now they are wanting to change to a simpler format.  i.e.  Everyones year starts on January 1, regardless of when you started.  They (at least one of them) want to be fair and make sure no one loses time, but they don't want to give away any time either.  

This has been going on for about the last year, with no results, because they can't figure out how to do it.  Some other issues to be considered are:  It is not done by the hour a day is a day.  Vacation time does not accrue - After 90 days you get 10 days, after 5 years you get 15 days (period, although they can "add" days at their discretion).

Does anyone have any ideas on how to go about doing this.  I have to say it would also make my life a little easier to keep track of days, but I have a pretty good system going now as well.  I just want the bickering to stop.

(Can you tell I work for a small / family owned business?)

Any help is greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance

[lauragfoss]

My thought would be to change everyone's vacation date on their anniversary date, and have an accrual amount.

For example, if your anniversary date is in August, then in August of this year you would be notified of the new policy.  You would then be given a "pro-rated" amount of vacation days based on the number of months between your anniversary date and January 1.  In this case, you would have 4 months.  10/12 is ~.85 days per month, so you would get ~3.4 days of vacation to use between your anniversary date and January 1.  If they are willing to be fair, and soften the policy change blow, they could round that up to 4 days.

It would take a full year to get everyone on the same schedule, though.

[countrigal]

Am I simplifying things too much?  If you get a set amount of leave, lump sum, on your anniversary date -- based on amt of time with company - then why not just say that as of Jan everyone gets their leave and they have until next Jan to use it?  Starting with the first month of the year ensures that everyone gets their leave that year, not missing anyone.  Even if you got your leave balance say in Aug 03, and they implemented this in Jan '04, you would have what you had from '03 + the new balance for '04.  All that leave would have to be used by Jan 05.  They could even do a bit more work and say that for '03 you had xx # of hours/days that must be used NLT Aug '04, with the remainder able to be taken all the way through to Jan '04.  Then those who are already getting leave as of Jan wouldn't be adversly affected since they're basically on that schedule.  Those who use Feb or Mar will have already used most of their leave and won't have a lot of carry-over, but will not be punished by switching over, and those who get their leave in Dec under the old system still get their leave too, but are switched over to the new system too.  It might appear that they're getting double the leave, but they're not, just moving their next leave accrual date back from Dec to Jan.

CountriGal
Peer Moderator

[spitfire78]

My company did this a few years back, and it worked pretty much the way Countrigal stated.  We are allowed to accrue 24 days and no more.  However, for the transition year, they waived that.  They added any leftover vacation days to the lump sum you were given at the start of the new year (July 1 for us).  Then, you had until June 30 of the following year to get it back down to 24 days.  If you were over 24 days at the end of the transition year, you lost the extra days.

[dwreath]

The way we handle it... is we earn our days per month.  So every month we earn 10 hours.  In Jan. of every year we let the employees know how much they have left.  They can either carry-it over or have it paid out.  My boss also put in a clause that says they can't carry over more than 20 hours.

How we handle new employees... if they start before the 15th of the month, they only get 5 hours for that month and if they start after the 15th they get 10 hours.  

I just keep a running total every year.  No need for keeping track of start dates or seperate calenders for each person.  I just list the months of the year on top and the employees down the left.  I write down each month how many hours they earned (typically 10) and then how much they used... then I have a 'running balance' spot.

Deb

[gee4]

I agree with Laura - at least that is the way one company I worked for did it when they changed their system.

Why can't all companies take annual leave from Jan to Dec??  Is that too much to ask?

G