Vacation, PTO, personal days etc

At our grocery store it goes by seniority.
When the new work year starts a list of when you want to take your vacation goes around.

I didn’t know about a vacation until a few weeks ago and put it in.
Since no one above me put in for the same week and they had enough coverage, my request was approved.

My company used to have vacation days and 6 sick days. A couple of years ago we went to one PTO bucket, which I'm not a fan of. I've been in the office with people who are SICK and will even tell you they're sick but they're "not wasting a PTO day" staying home. It makes me very angry because it's very selfish. Especially with the technology today, people can work remotely if they don't want to "waste" a PTO day, just stay home.

I work got a government agency. We have to get prior approval but as long as there is enough coverage it’s approved. I usually have to make sure my co-worker and I don’t take the same time off because we support the same program so one of us needs to be here.

My DH has had to deny PTO. He manages recruiters and there have been times they aren’t producing well but want to take a bunch of time off. Nope, not for the good of the company. If you can produce and still take a lot of time off, then sure.

We have vacation, sick, holiday and personal holidays. The vacation, sick and PHs all work the same way. You don't have to be sick to use sick time. We can roll over 40 hours of sick time a year, so I usually take time off at end of year using sick time to make sure I'm below that 40 hour mark.

As far as vacation, it depends on what part of the company you work in. For most parts, it's basically, if you want to take a day off and you can manage your work load/meetings, great.

For my Team specifically because most of them travel, we know their travel schedule a couple of months ahead. If they are scheduled for travel, they can't ask for those days off. Anything else is free game.

And for one department in our company (a call center) they have to have a certain # of people each day, so they are limited in regards to how many people can be off each day. They aren't able to schedule last minute vacation that easily. They do a bid system at the beginning of each year for the chunks of time (1 weeks segments) based on seniority. Christmas week and Spring break week or based on a draw though. After all that, first come, first serve.

I get 4 weeks vacation, 10 personal days and unlimited sick time, (I am assuming if sick time was taken advantage of it would be limited but it hasn't been in my 8 yrs). There are 3 of us that do my job, one of has to be working at all times - M-F - 8 - 4 so the three of us just figure it out and then let HR know.

I think all places have an approval process, however, for most places it is just a rubber stamp approval. If it would shut down programs, then it needs to be first come, first served. Another way would be to have a calendar with approved PTO on it and have a policy that only X employees can be off at once. Then it is on them to look and to know they cant be off rather than you needing to deny the time.

When I first started with the Company I was in a non-management group and vacation was based on seniority. A list went around and you signed up for one week at a time.

As I moved through the company in various groups and management positions, vacation was more relaxed. We knew what days we had to be at work for deadlines, but other than that, we just sent in a request form and it was almost always approved. In my current group, we don’t have staffing issues where there has to be at least one body in the office. Between Christmas and New Years the offices are like a ghost town. If we have no plans, I actually like to work those days because it is so quiet. Then I take the week off after Jan 1st. Groups with year-end deadlines are different though.

Our vacation, personal days, and sick days are different buckets. As a management employee, I don’t have to use a sick days for medical appointments as long as I work at least 4 hours. So I always schedule appointments around 2-3, so then I leave work right after lunch.

We do “request” it - but it never gets denied that I know of.
The longer the time off, the more in advance you should let people know.
I’m planning to take all of April off next year, and I have already told my manager.

I am in a dual role right now. At one... we have four weeks of vacation, unlimited sick time, plus 24 holidays (a week off over the 4th of July, a week off at the winter holidays, four day weekends for most federal holidays, three day weekends for Juneteenth and Veterans' Day). We do not request time off. We are a fully remote start up, that's small team of professionals and are expected to select times that will work for our specific team, make plans/identify backup, inform people, and that's it. But that works for the nature of the company, our work, and our team.

My other role, which is running a company owned by my primary company, is a whole different ball of wax. It's a bricks & mortar company that's open to the public six days a week. We do have to have a certain number of people in each of a few different positions on hand to make things work and serve customers. So there's an approval process in place, and requests are supposed to be made at least a week in advance for a day off, and at least a month in advance for multiple days off. In practice, as long as it doesn't cause a staff shortage, if someone wants to take time off on shorter notice and they have the time, I'll approve it.

There is a formal request policy and process. But, I am very flexible with my staff when things pop up and in return they are flexible in helping out.

Works well for me.

You cannot tell me "I can use it whenever", if there is a policy in place. In THEORY you can but if we already have 2 nurses on PTO that shift you're going to have to choose a different day if we can't accommodate. That is the policy. You are free to call out but do that too often and you'll be in corrective action.

But again, when this is an issue almost everyone is flexible in covering those shifts including myself. We look out for each other--I know not every unit runs like that and I'm very grateful for my team

It really depends on team/department.

Operations Team - those folks need to provide coverage 24/7, so PTO can be declined if it would result in a coverage issue.
Customer Service Team - same thing...we staff the call centers 24/7

My team Product which is a team of exempt employees, all managers and above...we do need to submit our PTO time, but I've never heard of any being denied.  We do need to make sure the work still gets done and someone will cover for us should an issue with our product come up.  We are very seasonal and I would never intentionally take time off between October 1 and Dec 24.  I manage several eCommerce sites and we do 60% of our full year sales during the holidays.

This is how it is at my company in my department.  We work it out amongst ourselves.  Generally we trade off Christmas and Thanksgiving, but other times you just put it on the calendar, first come, first served.  My big vacation to Germany is already on the calendar for May, 2024.

I work for a fairly large company. We have to submit a leave request in the leave system which is then approved by our direct manager, and is tied into the payroll system. In my team of six people, we have an Excel spreadsheet where we put in our leave. This is to make sure everyone in the team can see when others will be on leave. We can only have one person off at a time (unless there are special circumstances).

When my kids were in school, I used to put in my leave requests for the following year in about September. This was so I could get one week off every set of school holidays (January, April, July, September). Luckily nobody else had school aged kids, so I was pretty much always able to get leave when I wanted. 

As a teacher, we could take sick time (8 days) as needed. Our personal time (2-3 days) had to be pre approved by the principal. If we wanted/needed to take more than that, we had to have it approved by district administration. And by then they took a full day's pay out of our paycheck as well as any benefits (health, retirement, etc.). It would end up costing you almost 2 days of pay. We also had black out days on Mondays and Fridays for the last few months of the year and we knew we couldn't ask for personal time off those days and if we had to be out for sickness, the other teachers in the building had to cover our class (or divide them up into the the other teachers' rooms without any compensation). Thankfully I was very rarely out of the building. It just was too hard. Writing sub plans on top of it (up to 90 minutes to plan and pull lessons and copies) made it so people just came in sick.