How does PTO work for salary employees?

The way a company's PTO for salary employees works varies depending on the structure the company uses for their PTO policies. A company's PTO policy structure typically determines the amount of paid time an employee can take off work and the guidelines by which the employer approves that time off. Companies have three different options to choose from when deciding how their PTO policies work: traditional paid time off systems, PTO bank systems and unlimited PTO systems.

Traditional paid time off systems provide employees with a set number of days in which they can use PTO for a specific reason. The traditional paid time off system provides employees a specific number of days or hours they can use and breaks that time up into separate categories for vacation, sick days and personal leave. Many employers increase the amount of time an employee receives in each category as the employee's tenure with the company increases

PTO bank systems combine all the days an employer would provide to an employee for vacation, personal leave, sick days and sometimes holidays into a pool of total paid time off hours. The PTO bank does not distinguish how the employee can use their available time. Instead, it shows only the total number of hours the employee has available to use.

Unlimited PTO systems are results-driven systems for administering PTO in which the employer does not set a limit to the number of days or hours an employee can take off. Instead, these systems allow employees to take time off when they need to for any reason as long as their time off does not impact their work or disrupt the business.