Obviously it's legal as Cisco does it but how is a company allowed to force employees to use PTO?
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*I didn't expect the personal attack on my planning skills. *
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I've never worked sales, so I was unaware of the way the commissions were calculated as it never impacted me. But it's good to know for those who are in sales. In that case, it's best to spread the PTO you do take each year evenly between the quarters.
You're both correct and incorrect in your statement that it's not legal. It's not legal for the company to force individuals to take PTO, but they can force the entire company, at least within a given country, to take PTO, like they do in the US for the year-end shutdown. Back in 2008, Cisco required that all employees take 3 (or 4?) days PTO during Q4 with the specific days being at the employee's discretion. That was too hard to manage and was too disruptive to operations with people taking time off at different times, so they switched to the year-end shutdown where everyone was off at the same time.
I've usually tried to save up my PTO to where I get to the use or lose situation and then take 1 or 2 days off, just enough to keep from accruing additional PTO until I get to a convenient time to take a family vacation in the summer or take 2-3 weeks off at the end of December. Then I let it build back up again. In the US, assuming you have less than 5 yrs, you earn 160 hrs per yr of PTO, but you can carry up to 220 hrs at any given time leaving you with 7 days PTO if you use all 20 days each year. Given that the big LR's come in Aug with the accrued PTO payout in Sept, I usually have 160 hrs accrued which is 20 days pay. I take my 2-3 weeks at year-end depending on whether or not I plan to take a week in the summer and be back up to 160+ hrs the next Aug.
It's nice always having an additional 4 weeks severance pay "in the bank". I had a manager accuse me of "poor time management" my 2nd year as an employee when I had to start taking 1 day's PTO every pay period because I'd hit 220 hrs accrued PTO in late summer. What he called "poor time management" was his lack of providing "mentor-ship" as I didn't understand how the accrual cutoff process worked. I thought you couldn't roll over more than 220 hrs at the end of the year and planned very carefully how much time off to take at Thanksgiving and Christmas to leave myself with 210 hrs on Dec 31st when I suddenly noticed that I'd stopped accruing PTO hrs when I hit 220 hrs mid-year. I didn't want to take a week off in Aug and wanted to preserve as much of it as I could until Thanksgiving, so I tried to ask my manager if he had a preference between me taking every other Monday, Wednesday or Friday off and which day would be the least impact to our work schedule. I didn't expect the personal attack on my planning skills.
Bottom line, your PTO is your PTO. But if you use it or don't use it in a way that your manager doesn't approve, you're only putting yourself at risk of a poor performance report and/or LR.
Cisco Sales leadership tries to make people take PTO all the time, but I’ve never complied with their requests. It’s not legal and they can’t force you to take off. The reason they try to make people take PTO is because PTO days are paid out of a different cost center.
AND, depending on your commission plan (go and ready it carefully), you may not be paid commission for days you’ve taken off. Some (most) of the commission plans have a variable in them called “Number of Days Worked”. The less days you work, the less your total commission for a period.
So when people take PTO it costs departments far less opex.
It also means far less of a PTO payout for people that may be LR’ed.
So do like I’ve done for the last 12 years... never listen to management when they say “take PTO”.
HP is doing it this year
I hate to break it to you, but Cisco most certain IS forcing people to take PTO in the US, and Canada.
I forget the first year that Cisco first had the mandatory PTO, but they mandated in May or June that all employees had to take 3 or 4 days of mandatory PTO during Q4 before the end of the fiscal year. This was in like, 2008 or 2009. Contractors were informed they were going to be furloughed.
Then, they claimed that people liked the shutdown break so much that they decided to continue the tradition. But, recognizing that people had planned summer vacations and year round schools caused problems with the short notice, so they decided that they'd do it at the year end and do it every year and everyone could plan for it. Of course, only in the US and Canada, could they mandate the dates, so other countries were "highly encouraged" to take 3 or 4 days of PTO in that quarter. Some years, it's been 3 days, some year's it's been 4 days. It depends on when New Year's Day is observed. Contractors are required to sign agreements stating that they're aware that there's a year-end shutdown at the end of the year and what the dates are for each year.
I can't speak to countries outside the U.S, and I can only state that the HR notices Cisco shared with me were for U.S. AND Canadian employees.
I worked at another company that did a mandatory furlough for two-weeks. At the end of the two weeks, they gave us our notices and paid us for the prior two weeks. I didn't think that legal, because they didn't tell us when the furlough started that it was possible we'd be losing our jobs meaning it wasn't pay-in-lieu of notice. I'll take Cisco's severance packages over that treatment any day.
Not here in the USA, you cannot force folks to take PTO. Other geographies have different rules (you can force people to take PTO in most Asian countries)