Paid time off is consistently one of the most requested benefits across all employee generations. Despite this fact, 55% of U.S. employees still don’t use all of their paid time off. Increasing risk of burnout and work-related stress and anxiety. Not taking time off hurts the employee and has a significant impact on the organization by lowering productivity and chipping away at the employee experience.

So the question becomes; Why aren’t employees taking time off? According to a 2017 survey by Glassdoor, the reasons U.S. workers don’t use their vacation time include:

Fear that no one else at the company can do the work

Fear of missing out on participating in an important project, decision, or meeting.

Fear of pending layoffs, so they bank all their vacation time to cash out should they lose their job.

Feel guilty about leaving the office for too long because they think their team might feel lost or overwhelmed.

They feel bad that they can afford to pay for a vacation when others in the organization can’t.

Worried that taking a vacation would make them appear less dedicated or replaceable

Even if they are physically away from the office, they are expected to check and reply to email, participate virtually in meetings and check voice messages.

There are many reasons, internal and external, that prevent employees from fully realizing the regenerative benefits of their paid time off. So, how can you overcome these objections and get employees to take time off without invoking unpopular company mandates? How can you inspire employees to take leave and truly disconnect? And how can you encourage employees to get away without causing workflow disruptions? 

Well, it’s not easy. But to do it right, you have to start with optimizing your existing PTO program.

Optimization starts with taking inventory of what you have and ask yourself some challenging questions. Some of these questions include:

Is this the right PTO policy for the type of culture and employee experience we’re attempting to foster at this organization?

Is this PTO policy serving the employee or the organization?

Does our PTO policy make it clear to employees that we encourage them to use their vacation time to disconnect from work and decompress?

Are there any clauses in our policy that might no longer reflect what we’re trying to accomplish as an organization?

Asking yourself questions in the spirit of bettering your policy is a significant first step. A survey at this stage can be beneficial for you to identify further improvements to your policy. Sidebar: At Genius, we conduct free, zero-obligation, PTO Analysis surveys. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need help figuring out how to complete an effective survey. Reach us at hello@ptogenius.com.

The next step is to speak to your managers and determine blackout dates based on departmental needs. Some departments get busier during certain times of the year. You want to account for that because you’re not going to want to encourage employees to time off during those dates. Write this down; you’re going to need it later.

You’re then going to want to compile a list of all employees who have large PTO balances or have not taken PTO in a long time. A good rule of thumb is to start with employees that have not taken any time off for four to five months. I like to group these in one list and the 6 – 12 month groups in another. Followed by one final list with the 13 month plus employees. I take all these lists and cross-reference them with the departmental blackout dates. If you’re feeling brave and have an HRIS, you can export PTO requests for the upcoming six months and start to plan out a potential outreach strategy based on employees who are at the highest risk of burnout that have no scheduled PTO. You might want to brush up on your excel ninja skills to speed up the work on this. For you super users, or if you just woke up feeling dangerous, you can export exchange calendars and – nevermind, that’s a topic for another article, and doing that would drive you nuts.

Once you have this final list organized, you’re going to want to start reaching out to employees based on the highest likelihood of burning out and encouraging them to get way. As you work your way through the list, you’re going to go from suggesting a week (or so) to those who haven’t taken time off in a year or more down to a long weekend for employees who haven’t taken time off in four months. The idea is to nudge employees to take time off, proportional to their likelihood of being low on productivity and high on burnout.

As you most likely guessed. This is a time-consuming process to start and even more time-consuming to continue. It also frequently falls out of date, so you have to stay on top of it. That’s why you’re going to want to automate it.

Now that you have your list and you’ve started to use it to encourage employees to take time off, you’ve probably realized that it takes up a lot of time. You can automate your outreach with an email marketing service like Mailchimp. You’ll want to create a list for each employee category you created above and a template or two. That should do the trick. The key is in managing the list and keeping it updated. Moving new employees into your list and moving employees around as they fall out of one list and move into another. It’s tedious, but it’s much better than sending the messages out manually.

If you’d like to get all of the benefits that come with optimizing and automating your paid time off but don’t have the time to actively manage the program or just don’t need any more anxiety in your life, check out PTO Genius.

At PTO Genius, we’ve built a full suite of AI-powered tools that help automate and optimize your PTO. Specifically, our PTO Optimizer automatically notifies employees of company-friendly times to get away and presents them with fun and inspiring activities to do while on vacation. Helping you increase PTO utilization and reduce burnout, resulting in improved employee engagement. Our Employee Pulse keeps an eye on employees and departments a risk of burnout and nudges them to get away before things get too bad. Some forward-thinking companies are also using PTO Genius as a financial wellness tool. 

You can always do some of it yourself. I just told you how you could above. But if you’d like to get more out of your PTO, reach out! hello@ptogenius.com

More than half of Americans don't use all their PTO, leading to burnout and lower productivity. Solutions like PTO Genius help you solve these problems – here’s how.

Optimizing paid time off to transform the employee experience

After almost a year and a half of market research, legal due diligence, product development, and three successful pilots, PTO Genius officially launched.

The excitement was contagious as PTO Genius took first prize at SuperConf, one of the biggest tech conferences in Florida. “We were hopeful that we would win but the competition had some amazing tech” said Ulises I. Orozco, Co-Founder of PTO Genius. “This win brings us one step closer to our goal of help companies and employees do more with their PTO.”

With 55% of full-time US employees not using all of their PTO, and over 78% of people living paycheck-to-paycheck, there’s a lot of opportunity to help improve the lives of America’s workforce.

Second place winner CommandDot built an elegant way to supercharge productivity via easy-to-use shortcuts for email. While the teams at Artify, the popular web-based graphic editor, Approvely, and Cargologik all presented impressive and disruptive technologies across multiple business verticals. “It was really an honor to be surrounded by such an innovative group of companies,” said Orozco. “The team at PTO Genius was so happy to be featured amongst such a strong group, and we’re humbled by the results.”

With the victory comes a small cash prize and access to free services from SuperConf sponsors Postmark, Sentry, and Figma. “We’re big fans of these products at PTO Genius. Some we already use daily to bring our services to enterprise.” said Orozco.

“We are all experiencing an abrupt change in our personal and work lives. A new normal is here. But for us, this award is a part of a bigger experience – an opportunity to celebrate the positivity, adaptability, and hard work that everyone involved at SuperConf displayed.” said Orozco.

We’re a disruptive and innovative company that exists to improve the lives of America’s workforce by delivering transformative human capital software solutions that contribute substantially to our client’s success.

The PTO Genius web and companion mobile helps companies increase employee engagement while reducing PTO liability. The software proactively surfaces opportunities for employees to get away and makes it easy to convert extra PTO to fund vacations, pay down student loans, contribute to retirement, or cover emergency expenses.

Built by an experienced team of HR Tech veterans with over 30 years of experience, PTO Genius is ready to help you reimagine what your PTO can do. Contact us to learn more.

PTO Genius is thrilled to announce that we have won first prize at SuperConf, one of the biggest tech conferences in Florida.

PTO Genius wins grand prize at tech conference

As states begin to relax their quarantines, let’s look at six States experiencing economic growth after reopening businesses. These six States will give us a picture of how a post-COVID-19 America might look in the near future. And according to the numbers from May, things could be pretty good.

Twice as many Americans have been put out of work over the last two months than during the entire Great Recession of 2008. Forty-two million workers in the US have lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus. It doesn’t stop there. J.P. Morgan analysts wrote to investors last week in their US Weekly Prospects report predicting a real GDP forecast for the second quarter of 2020 at -31%. 

As businesses start to reopen, hiring conditions continue to improve. The number of unemployment claims have dropped for twelve straight weeks. According to Labor Department figures, about 80% of those unemployed in April are expected to be back at their jobs within six months. 

By the end of this week, Apple will reopen (with restrictions, of course) 200 of the company’s 271 US retail locations. And 10 of those locations will be in New York City, the same city with the highest reported number of coronavirus cases. Big businesses don’t like to make dumb decisions, so this move by Apple speaks volumes.

Retail sales in May were up a record 17.7%, and consumer spending, making up 70% of all economic activity in the United States, increased about 8% in the same month. Sales at vehicle dealers were up 44.1% in May. As were restaurant receipts, which were up by 29.1%. The value of all May sales receipts was only under 6.1% of last May’s reported sales. Pretty cool considering that this is double the number economists had expected for May. Let the easing of pent-up demand flow! 

By May 20th, each State that imposed a stay-at-home order begun to lift the restriction. The reopening of businesses varies from State to State, and in many cases from county to county. Let’s take a look at those states where we see economic growth instead of economic contraction. 

According to J.P. Morgan analysts, Arkansas’ daily growth rate remains at 5%, which is very good considering the significant contraction earlier predicted by most economists. Six states—Arizona, South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee—have a daily growth rate of just above 3%.

Gym, fitness centers, and indoor athletic facilities were permitted to resume operations starting May 4th. By May 6th, barbershops and hair salons also had permission to reopen. Dine-in restaurants were allowed to open and operate at a third of normal capacity on May 11th, but groups of customers cannot exceed ten people.

By April 30th, the State’s stay-at-home orders had expired. Retailers and beaches have opened with restrictions. The same goes for gyms, athletic facilities, barbershops, hair salons, and nail salons. 

Stores selling furniture, books, music, flowers, clothing, and accessories, as well as department stores, sporting goods stores, and flea markets, have been open since April 20th. These stores have to maintain 20% capacity. Restaurant dining is also now permitted. So have gyms, athletic facilities, salons, barbershops, and tattoo parlors (didn’t expect that last example, did you?). 

Gov. Roy Cooper’s office developed a three-phase plan for managing the reopening of businesses in the State. Phase 1 began May 8th, allowing retail stores to open at 50% capacity. Childcare facilities for children with working parents or parents looking for work also opened. Phase 2 will permit restaurants to open but not nightclubs, gyms, or indoor fitness facilities. 

On May 8th physical retail stores were allowed to open with strict distancing rules for customers and staff. Barbershops and salons were also included in the same order with the same physical distancing rules applied to retail stores. By May 11th, restaurants resumed dine-in services again.

Retail outlets, restaurants, and gyms have reopened. Both barbershops and salons have also reopened in 89 of the State’s 95 counties. This last bit of news highlights the regional management of relaxing business restrictions, which can and often does vary from county to county.

As much as we enjoy reporting on those states experiencing an economic recovery, it should be noted that five of those six States are also reporting record levels of hospitalizations. Until a vaccine is developed, it seems that state and local governments will have to balance the costs of reopening with the costs of coronavirus resurgence. 

This goes to show that when the coronavirus is contained, people will find work again. A lot of money is still to be made, and businesses will need to rehire workers. So, in the meantime, we’ll have to sit back and watch as governments respond to new developments. But make no mistake: the light at the end of the tunnel is blindingly bright.

As states begin to relax their quarantines, let’s look at six States experiencing economic growth after reopening businesses.

The Recovery of U.S. Business: A Comeback Story

Unlimited PTO (paid time off) has been all the rage over the past few years, especially amongst startups.

According to Quartz, jobs postings mentioning unlimited vacation have increased by 178% between 2015 and 2019. Most commonly, unlimited policies have seen the highest interest from the tech start-ups, though other industries have been following suit. “It’s just a lot easier to get an unlimited PTO policy going” said Adam Gordon, Co-Founder of PTO Genius. “But that exactly where the issue starts. These policies tend to be forgotten, improperly documented, and poorly implemented. That’s when it gets risky.”

While unlimited PTO may seem like a dream for employees it can have the exact opposite effect when put into practice. “In a time when companies are attempting to be more inclusive, an improperly managed unlimited policy can end up creating a great deal of inequity,” said Gordon. “Potentially opening up the company to serious legal liability.”

If your company has unlimited PTO, you may want to switch to a traditional PTO plan. Or, at the very least, seriously reconsider how you structure and manage your unlimited PTO policy. First, you should educate yourself on exactly what an unlimited PTO plan entails. Then, how it’s playing out in companies in the U.S., and what changes you may want to consider making to your plan.

Unlimited PTO, also known as unlimited vacation, theoretically lets employees call out of work for as long as they want for vacation or sick. 

How is Unlimited PTO different from Traditional PTO?

With Traditional PTO, an employee receive an average of 10 vacation days off per year. Days off are usually accrued throughout the year, with total awarded days off increasing with tenure. Companies track how much time off an employee takes and may have a “use it or lose it policy.” If this is the case, HR will usually urge workers to take advantage of their time off before it expires.

By providing unlimited PTO, companies can better position themselves to attract higher-quality talent. This is even more important for competitive tech jobs like software engineering or web development.

On the administrative side, HR has one less thing to track, making their job a little easier. Instead of focusing on PTO, they can put their energy towards other important workplace initiatives like inclusion and the employee experience. CFO’s love unlimited policies because there is no accrual of time. So there is no looming PTO liability to account for on the company balance sheet.

Unlimited PTO doesn’t always work out for the employee. According to Namely, employees with access to unlimited PTO take an average of 13 days off per year. That’s two fewer days per year than their counterparts with traditional PTO policies. This tends to happen for a few reasons:

Lack of clarity: Employees aren’t sure about how much time off is too much time off.

Lack of ownership: Since PTO isn’t accrued as an employee works, employees don’t feel that they’ve “earned” the time off. It doesn’t feel like the PTO belongs to them.

Lack of encouragement: Unlike traditional policies, management tends to encourage getting away a lot less with unlimited plans.

Additionally, organizations with the wrong culture may face disruptions or operational inefficiencies due to improperly planned or managed unlimited vacation time. Without clear definitions, employees may not know how much time off is acceptable and could avoid taking time off or abuse the policy.

The most pressing issue with unlimited policies that no one is talking about is the very real potential for bias and inequity.

Let’s say two employees under an unlimited policy have similar job functions but different managers. Employee # 1 has a friendly relationship with her manager and takes PTO often at her discretion. Employee # 2’s manager doesn’t encourage time off and frequently denies her leave requests.

In some organizations, unlimited PTO is creating a system of unequal and inconsistent access to time off across the organization. In the example above, Employee # 2 is getting access to less time off. Less time to recharge, less time to clear her mind, less time to spend with her family. If Employee # 2 just so happens to be a minority, this could be seen as a clear violation of employment and discrimination laws. Opening the door to a costly and depending on the size of the organization, a potentially financially crippling lawsuit.

Unlimited PTO policies may seem great, but if improperly managed, you might be trading off financial liability for legal liability.

What can I do to prevent or limit my legal exposure?

Ideally, you would implement and manage unlimited policies as it’s intended; as a self-managed time off policy. Trusting employees to manage their own time away is the easiest way to help your organization hedge against legal exposure related to an unlimited policy. However, in practice, this is a lot harder to accomplish. It requires the right company culture centered around trust, accountability, and mutual respect. If that’s you, that’s great! An unlimited PTO policy is a great fit for you. However, If your company doesn’t have the right culture then you should seriously consider moving to a traditional policy. It’s just less risky that way.

If a company introduces unlimited PTO, the program can become more complicated than it seems. Companies must have a consistent policy across the board and aim to eradicate any bias from managers. If you have unlimited, you should consider encouraging employees to take time off. Add language to your policy that makes it clear that there is a minimum expectation of time off. And come up with a system of checks and balances to ensure everyone is treated fairly.

Typically, unlimited policies are good for small companies if employees are given agency over their own time off. But as a company starts to get larger, graduating into a traditional policy is the best bet for success.

Traditional PTO gives employees something to work up to, which increases employee loyalty at the same time. It encourages employees to actually take their earned time off, ensuring they get that much-needed distance from the office at least once per year.

While a traditional PTO policy is ideal, the priority is making sure that your employees are using their accrued PTO. That’s where PTO Genius can help.

With PTO Genius, employees are proactively encouraged to take time off during times that are non-disruptive to the company. If an employee can’t take time off, PTO Genius makes it very easy to use PTO to pay down student loans or fund retirement. Employers benefit from a boost in employee retention, peace of mind, and happiness.

Contact us today for a demo to get started.

Thinking about implementing an unlimited paid time off (PTO) policy for your organization? Read this first. What may seem like a dream can quickly become a nightmare.

Unlimited PTO: The Good, The Bad and the Really Bad

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic government and businesses alike have been pressed to respond to the challenges of a mass shutdown of businesses within the U.S. Some organizations have done well, and in a few cases have gone above and beyond, to help their workers. Let’s take a look at eight organizations we think are doing an awesome job at providing peace of mind and financial stability during these uneasy times.

Perhaps the most impressive example of a company acting quickly to support its workers has been set by Starbucks. From March 21st through May 31st Starbucks had raised all salaries by an additional $3 per hour. Employees exposed to or diagnosed with Coronavirus were also eligible to receive what the company calls “Catastrophe Pay” from May 4th until May 31st. Employees of closed stores have since been eligible to continue receiving Catastrophe Pay. 

On top of that, Starbucks has been offering employees experiencing financial difficulty Hardship Grants, sourced from the $10 million dollar CUP (Caring Unites Partners Fund). This isn’t Starbucks’ first rodeo dealing out emergency relief to employees. The CUP Fund was established in 1998 and has since supported more than 28,000 individuals. 

Home Depot has expanded benefits for its employees by adding 80 hours of PTO for all full-time hourly employees and 40 hours of PTO for all part-time employees. The company added 160 hours of PTO for full-time employees over 65 or considered to be at higher risk by the CDC, and added 80 hours of PTO for part-time workers.

Home Depot is also providing double-time pay for those hourly employees working overtime They have also included additional bonuses to hourly associates at $100 per week for full-time employees and $50 per week for part-time employees in stores and distribution centers. . This incremental paid time off can be used anytime between now and the end of the year, and will be paid out to employees by the end of the year if not used.

Of all the sick leave policies that have been introduced since March, Verizon may have implemented the most robust of these policies. The company’s Covid-19 specific paid leave policy offers 100% of pay to affected employees for 8 weeks, and 60% of pay for 16 weeks. Moreover, Verizon has committed to not laying off any of its 135,000 employees. And even though it is the largest wireless carrier by subscribers in the U.S., the company has held back on cutting service for those customers who are unable to to pay their phone bills. 

As of March 10, 2020, Walmart implemented a formal COVID-19 emergency leave policy that can be used under three different circumstances:

if any employee is unable or uncomfortable to come into work that they are permitted to stay at home and be paid from their regular PTO options. 

in the case that employees cannot work because of mandated quarantining, those employees will receive up to two weeks pay.

if an employee has a confirmed case of COVID-19 they will receive two-weeks pay with additional pay to the extent that they are unable to return to work. 

Employees enrolled in the company’s medical plan have virtually  free access to the telehealth service Doctor on Demand  (the usual $4 co-pay has been waived). Moreover, all employees and their family members have the option to use three free behavioral counseling sessions and unlimited telephonic counseling. This applies to all employees and their family members, not just those employees enrolled in the company’s medical plan. 

As of March 25th, AT&T has extended its original 80 hours of PTO to up to a total of 160 hours for employees that:

have tested positive for COVID-19 and are to remain quarantined

are at higher risk due to underlying health conditions

are parents or guardians of children whose schools have been closed due to COVID-19 and for those who are able to find an alternative childcare option.

AT&T has also doubled the number of PTO hours previously available to qualifying employees as well as a 20% bonus to front-line workers. 

Kroger is America’s largest supermarket chain with 2,500 locations and a workforce of 435,000 employees. The company offered a temporary $2 per hour pay increase until mid-May (which has been criticized by union leaders) and then provided an additional one-time bonus of $400 to full-time workers and $150 for all part-time workers. Qualifying workers have access to two weeks (14 days) of standard pay. 

Target has taken several measures to help their employees, amounting to $500 million dollars in extended benefits and safety measures for team members. Wages for all full-time and part-time employees have been raised by $2-per-hour, earning team members $240-$480 more, on average, until July 4th. Team members 65 or older, pregnant, or with underlying health conditions have access to paid leave for up to 30 days. In April, bonuses ranging from $250-$1,500 were paid to 20,000 hourly teams leads who oversee individual departments. 

After having to reduce branch hours across all 4,300 locations, Bank of America is providing all branch workers with a biweekly $200 bonus. Hour reductions notwithstanding, workers have been paid for their regular, full schedule. The bank has reduced its Monday to Friday hours from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. These hour reductions allow for the daily cleanings of the branches, which raises the point that all high-traffic businesses are to also meet the sanitary requirements for containing the spread of the novel coronavirus.

In an impressive gesture, Bank of America has also established a $100 million dollar relief fund for local communities and also vowed to not have a single coronavirus-linked layoff through 2020.

All the above-mentioned businesses are making the wellbeing of their employees a top priority. They’ve put people over profit. These companies are dipping deep into their own pockets to make sure their employees have the basic goods necessary to provide for themselves and their families. People need to pay bills and would likely work for less money then what they’ve been offered by these companies. But luckily they’ve not been left behind. This is a vision of the future of work that we can all get behind.

These eight organizations are doing a great job at providing peace of mind and financial stability to their employees during these uneasy times.

8 companies stepping up during the Coronavirus

It shouldn’t surprise anyone to know that personal struggles affect our professional performance. The same is true with the hurdles we face in the workplace. As hard as we try, it’s very difficult to truly compartmentalize our challenges as we shift between our personal and professional obligations. The new hybrid workforce has only served to further exacerbate this problem by making it even harder to draw a clear distinction between our omnipresent responsibilities. We frequently find ourselves juggling the children and zoom calls. Checking Slack messages and text messages. We’re always on, and because of this – and the uncertainty of a devastating and unprecedented pandemic – employees are more stressed and anxious than ever. 

According to data from the CDC, all working-age demographics reported increased anxiety or depression in 2020. The two largest age groups were hit hardest; 58.7% of workers 18–29 and 49.5% of workers 30–39 reported new anxiety and depression symptoms. And it’s not just a cause for concern for the employee, the organization is also feeling its effects in the form of lower productivity, reduced engagement, and a compromised employee experience.

The challenge we’ve run into as HR leaders is identifying what kind of a wellness issue this truly might be. Is it an emotional/mental wellness issue? Where limited face-to-face social interactions are chipping away at our psyche? Sure, it certainly is for some. How about a physical wellness problem? A lot of us are working remotely in environments not meant to sustain prolonged work. Straining our eyes, hurting our backs, and not getting enough in the way of exercise. Sure, I can see that too. Or is this a financial wellness problem? Where a lot of us are concerned about losing our jobs or our companies going under. Of course. That might be it as well. The argument can be made for any of the above, and many others. And in many cases, you’d be right every time. Because this is not a mental, physical or financial wellness problem, this is a “total wellness” problem. And that’s what the modern HR leader understands. That wellness, in 2021, is personal and dynamic.

The modern HR leader is prioritizing and redefine what “wellness” means in the new normal for their organization. These leaders understand the source of employee anguish varies and changes often. So they are crafting a more dynamic and personalized definition of “wellness” that shifts as employees’ needs change. 

This new “Total Wellness” looks to holistically incorporate the elements of the eight dimensions of wellness not as another form of wellness but as a dynamic container whose definition changes based on the personalized needs of the individual. In practical application, your total wellness program for John the single dad with 2 small children could look very different from Jessica the 22-year-old college grad. John might need access to benefits that emphasize access to flex-time, financial peace of mind, and child welfare to feel “totally well”. Where Jessica might have a more urgent need for financial wellness solutions that help pay down student loans and good paid time off.

Though conceptually we aren’t talking about anything new, HR leaders are starting to take Total Wellness seriously. Creating policies and looking for solutions that help them build out their new Total Wellness programs. This will usher in new software solutions and tweaks to existing employee benefits that better reflect the employee’s worries. 

At PTO Genius we’ve been advocates of a holistic wellness approach and frequently encourage employers to reimagine their PTO to better serve the needs of more employees. Genius leverages artificial intelligence to actively promote time off to employees at risk of burnout while helping employees with financial concerns convert extra PTO into cash to use for emergencies or to pay down student loans. Of course, the company can opt to not offer financial wellness through PTO but we feel good about helping them at least look at their PTO program just a little different. And that’s what it’s about for us at PTO Genius. Taking a moment to help companies reconsider how things have always been so that they can see how much better things can be.

Personalized Total Wellness programs holistically incorporate the eight dimensions of wellness based on the personalized needs of the individual employee.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) went into effect April 1, 2020 and with it came a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity regarding how to best comply. In the days after the US Department Of Labor issued a series of frequent rolling updates in the form of Posters, FAQ’s and a Webinar in hopes of providing more specific guidance.

With so many updates it’s easy to get lost in the ocean of information. Following is a list of three potential mistakes that you want to make sure to avoid.

Mistake #1: Complying with the FFCRA when you might not have to

FFCRA provides employers with 500 or less employees refundable tax credits that reimburse them, dollar-for-dollar, for the cost of providing up to two weeks of paid sick and up to 12 weeks of expanded family and medical leave wages to their employees for leave related to COVID-19.

However, your business might be exempt if you employ fewer than 50 employees and if providing an employee such leave would jeopardize the viability of the business. This can come in the form of:

Your business expenses exceeding available business revenues that cause your business to cease operating at a minimal capacity;

If the absence of the employee(s) requesting paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave would entail a substantial risk to the financial health or operational capabilities of the business;

There aren’t sufficient workers to perform the labor or services provided by the employee or employees requesting paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave, and these labor or services are needed for the small business to operate at a minimal capacity.

I’m certainly not encouraging companies with less than 50 employees to look for ways to not comply. Ultimately, your employees will remember how they were treated during these difficult times and if anything, this pandemic represents an opportunity for you reinforce and elevate your company culture. But if complying is going to bankrupt your business, you should seek an exception and communicate with your employees honestly about it. Going further, it’s a good time to crowdsource ideas from your employees about how to provide some level of benefit outside the FFCRA that would show them your business cares while not jeopardizing the company. Maybe you can’t do 12 weeks but six might enough.

Mistake #2: Not calculating and re-calculating employee count correctly

For the purposes of the FFCRA you’ll have to maintain an accurate headcount. This means that you’ll have to count full-time, part-time, employees on leave, temporary employees who are jointly employed by you and another employer and day laborers supplied by a temporary agency. You can exclude workers who are independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). You’ll also have to recalculated total employees each time leave is requested by an employee between April 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020. Make it a point to maintain an up-to-date headcount and to speak to your managers often to make sure they are reporting leave correctly.

Mistake #3: Not properly documenting and archiving

In order to qualify for the FFCRA reimbursement employers are required to retain detailed documentation for four years. This applies regardless of whether an employer grants or denies a request for paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave. The employer must document the following:

The name of the employee requesting leave;

The date(s) for which leave is requested;

A statement from the employee that he or she is unable to work because of the reason.

If employee is subject to quarantine or isolation order, the name of the government entity.

If employee is subject to self-quarantine based on the advice of a health care provider, the name of the health care provider.

If your employee requests leave to care for his or her child whose school or place of care is closed, or childcare provider is unavailable, you must also document:

The name of the school, place of care, or childcare provider that has closed or become unavailable; and

A statement from the employee that no other suitable person is available to care for the child.

Make sure that you come up with an easy to maintain and access record system. Some of the major HRIS’ like Workday, Ultimate Software and Ceridian and have already started updating their software to support for FFCRA leave and documentation requirements. I encourage you to reach out to them and enable those features if they already haven’t been.

More information on the details of the FFCRA can be found on the DOL’s COVID-19 and The American Workplace website.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) uncertainty and ambiguity regarding how to best comply. Here are 3 common, but important mistakes to avoid.

3 mistakes to avoid when implementing the FFCRA

It’s no secret. Companies with higher employee engagement consistently outperform their competitors on every major business metric. Specifically, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace study, companies with high engagement are 17% more productive, 21% more profitable, and benefit from lower turnover (59%) and absenteeism (41%). So the way your company treats employees and how employees treat one another has a very tangible impact on how enthusiastic and committed employees are to their work, which shows up on the company’s bottom line. And with nearly 85% of employees worldwide classified as “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” by Gallup, there’s a lot of productivity and profitability being left on the table.

One of the fastest ways to boost morale and transform employee engagement is to encourage employees to use their paid time off. 55% of US employees don’t use all of their paid time off. Increasing risk of burnout and work-related stress and anxiety. 

But how can you inspire employees to take leave without causing workflow disruptions? How can you get employees to take time off at all without having to invoke unpopular company mandates? Well, it’s not easy. But to do it right would require you to actively monitor, manage and optimize your PTO program and time and attendance software on a daily basis. Looking for opportunities for every employee to take time off that would be non-disruptive for company workflow. Then you’d have to notify those employees and give them a reason to want to take time off. Conceptually, it’s not rocket science, but it would require a recurring investment of your time to execute. And let’s face it. You have other priorities on your plate. 

That’s why at PTO Genius, we built the PTO Optimizer. An AI-powered tool that automatically notifies employees of company-friendly times to get away and presents them with fun and inspiring activities to do while on vacation. Helping you increase PTO utilization and reduce burnout, resulting in improved employee engagement.

78% of US employees live paycheck-to-paycheck, and 69% of them have less than $1,000 in savings. Stress and anxiety related to finances are a very real problem for many employees in the modern workforce. The financial uncertainty brought on by the pandemic has further amplified the angst. That’s why some forward-thinking companies are reimagining what their employees can do with their PTO and empowering employees to convert unused PTO days to cover financial emergencies, pay down student loan debt and invest in their financial wellness. 

Although unorthodox, showing the employee that you have their financial interests in mind can go a long way if you’re looking to transform employee engagement. The peace of mind that comes from the employee knowing that they can tap into a small cash reserve should something come up is priceless.

The key to this one is making sure you set the right rules and policies to ensure that employees don’t take advantage of the program and cause the company to run into cash flow challenges. But if you use PTO Genius to manage this program, setting those rules is as easy as ordering an Uber.

Ultimately, engagement is all about how the company can connect with the employee. Don’t be afraid of getting human and questioning how you’ve done things in the past. Sometimes some of the best solutions are the ones that you’ve simply overlooked.

Nearly 85% of employees are classified as “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” by Gallup. Encouraging time off and giving employees new PTO tools is the solution.

Boost employee engagement by rethinking your paid time off

According to a survey from Monster, 50% of employees working remotely report experiencing burnout, and 52% report having no plan for taking time off from work.These facts are especially troubling given the limitations COVID has placed on an employee’s options to disconnect and refresh. 

But this is the New Normal, at least for now. These are the facts and circumstances that HR now faces. But just like the role of the HR professional has evolved in the post-COVID workplace, so too has HR’s ability to take action. This is an opportunity for employers to get creative about the ways that we can encourage employees to disconnect and recharge. 

Get together with employees via Zoom and discuss ways they can create stability and develop a routine. Discuss different time management techniques like time-blocking. Having a set approach for completing day-to-day tasks saves time and creates chances for employees to decompress.

One of the biggest challenges for remote workers is the loss of structure and social interaction that can occur when transitioning from an office environment to working from home. The Slack communication platform adds structure and creates a forum for meaningful daily conversations between employees as they discuss specific projects and work in general. Create a “Random Fun” channel and seed it daily with a fun topic that gets your employees engaging with each other.

Being under quarantine can be a lonely experience, especially for those living alone. In the absence of the traditional watercooler social, add meaningful discussion and a sense of belonging to remote workers by creating virtual social groups that change every week or so. Having virtual social groups provides employees the opportunity to get together with someone new, have fun, and enjoy relaxing conversation to help decompress after the workday. It can also help create an environment for collaboration. Where two employees that might never interact might help each other think about company projects and initiatives in a new way.

Schedule virtual team meetings. Make sure people turn their cameras on! These events can be fun, like playing charades on Zoom, where different teams compete for prizes. These friendly competitions can strengthen working relationships regardless of them being virtual. It’s also fun, which is essential. 

Show your team that you care by sending them mindfulness packs. These can contain calendars, agendas, and thoughtful reading materials. But they can also be relaxation boxes too! The possibilities are endless and vary depending on each particular organization. Showing your employees, the company cares can go a long way to helping them through the challenges of work-related stress.

BONUS: Not so creative way – Encourage taking PTO

This might be a hard one. Most people aren’t too excited about taking PTO during a pandemic. But employees working from home would benefit from using their PTO to recharge. Encourage your employees to take an extended weekend. If you really want to get creative, send them on a scavenger hunt for items in their home or neighborhood (Red Mailbox? Garden Gnome?). Have them email you the pictures for a prize. 

The novel coronavirus is the accelerator of one of the most significant workplace transformations of our lifetime. In this way, it creates the opportunity for many businesses like yours to get creative and redefine themselves in anticipation of future changes in work environments. Good luck and let us know of any other creative ways you might be used to prevent anxiety and depression.

In the post-Covid workplace, here are 5 things you and your HR team can do to reduce burnout and depression by encouraging employees to disconnect and recharge.

5 creative ways to reduce employee burnout and depression

It’s been roughly 20 months since the pandemic forever changed the work of work. HR leaders had to make difficult decisions, have tough conversations, and radically change how we operated our businesses to sustain the “going concern.” Now we find ourselves a little removed from the ambiguity and uncertainty and, with 2022 around the corner, we look to plan toward a new normal. A hybrid, dynamic, and distributed “normal” with both new and old, yet intensified, business challenges to account for.

The most pressing business challenges for 2022 are key employee retention and engagement, leadership development, and best integrating emerging technologies into the workplace.

They’re calling it the “Great Resignation.” According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August 2021. Resignations began rising in April 2021 and have remained unusually high for several months, with a record-breaking 10.9 million open positions across America at the end of July.

Particularly troubling is the type of employee that is quitting. According to a 4,000 company, 9 million employees in-depth analysis conducted by Havard Business Review, resignation rates are highest among mid-career employees. Employees between 30 and 45 years old have had the most significant increase in resignation rates, with an average increase of more than 20% between 2020 and 2021. This employee cohort represents a large portion of the young leadership and concentration of trained skills at many organizations. It isn’t easy to replace these employees, so retention and engagement, of these and other key employees, has become paramount to the success of the organization in 2022 and beyond.

I encourage you to start by taking a hard look at your existing employee perks and benefits. When’s the last time you took a deep dive and truly analyzed the details and nuances of your program? Who is it serving? Is it still applicable given the new needs of your changing workforce? If the answer to these questions is “no”, I highly advise you to consider revamping your employee perks and benefits. Start with listing out all of your HR goals for 2022 and update or eliminate old requirements, limitations, and clauses that don’t align with your goals for 2022. Then, once you have updated your program, look for modern benefits and vendors whose benefits align with your objectives. For example, if you’re looking to boost retention and engagement, consider products like PTO Genius to enhance and modernize your paid time off.

According to an independent study by Deloitte, 35% of employees report not getting enough opportunities to advance at their current companies; the second most prominent reason for near-term resignations, only outpaced by dissatisfaction with pay/financial rewards (43%). These are just a few of the many reasons contributing to the recent spike in employee resignations that have many companies looking outward to quell the alignment.

But I would argue the bigger challenge in 2022 is fostering an environment that systematically and strategically elevates and reskills employees from within to slot into vacant positions of influence and leadership.

Companies are breaking the bank to steal away talent, and competing solely on compensation and signing bonuses is a zero-sum game. Instead, you have to give employees continuous purpose and a road map towards growth and professional evolution. If you haven’t already, consider establishing and further investing in an internal mobility program that helps build critical hard and soft skills and competencies that align with business objectives to drive the most impact. It works well in the world of sports, where teams invest heavily in their younger talent through “farm” systems that stress fundamentals and continuous improvement, “calling up” the standouts at critical times to fill gaps in the organization.

Integrating emerging technologies into the workplace

HR tech is hotter than ever. New entrants into the vertical with traditional technology experiences and backed by millions of dollars in venture financing are creating exciting solutions to existing workforce challenges. The following two years will yield a lot of innovation in the workplace. Everything from recruiting to performance management and everything in between will benefit from artificial intelligence, augmented reality, prescriptive analytics, and virtual reality.

The business challenge in 2022 is appropriately identifying and integrating the most impactful advancements in work tech. Create a process for discovering, vetting, integrating, and measuring the impact of new technologies. Then, ensure that you roll out the technology progressively. Measuring performance every step of the way before rolling it out the whole employee population.

These technologies can be incredibly impactful to your organization, but not if you don’t have a plan to get the most out of them.

HR’s most pressing challenges are key employee retention and engagement, leadership development, and integrating emerging technologies into the workplace.

The 4 biggest HR challenges you can’t ignore in 2022

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