More employers today are doing away with the traditional time-off benefits of vacation days, sick days, and personal days. Instead, they are adopting a new concept called Paid Time Off (PTO). The idea of Paid Time Off (PTO) is to combine all time-off benefits into one “bank” of days off with pay. An employee will have so many days in their “bank,” and they can be used for any reason the employee needs to take time off, whether it be for illness, vacation, or to volunteer at their child's school.

In January 2010, HG Logistics LLC, a Cincinnati, Ohio freight broker servicing customers throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico, made the decision to incorporate a PTO plan in their company's policies.

PTO offers advantages to both the employer and employees.

Advantages For the Employer:

• The flexibility of PTO helps employers attract and retain talented employees.
• The burden for employers to track vacation, sick, and personal days is lightened, and more responsibility is shifted to the employees to use these days at their own discretion.

• PTO gives employers some control over unscheduled absences, which often becomes a serious and costly matter for companies.

Advantages For the Employee:

• Employees enjoy the flexibility that PTO offers.
• Employees who normally do not take sick days will feel more free to use their PTO days without worrying that it will reflect poorly on their attendance.