My company boasts of unlimited PTO, but it looks like actual time off (without strings attached) is a thing of the past. This is because of a change my company is pushing out starting in January of 2024.
As things are now, we are expected to complete a set amount of 7 hours of various projects per day (allowing an extra hour for email/zoom communications, meetings etc). Up until now, my company's policy was that you had to hit 100% of your personal goal per month (so basically complete 7 hours of project work per day, every day of the month). The caveat was that we were given permission to miss goal for only two months of the year. So basically, if I wanted to take off extended time, I could do so, but only twice per year. Makes sense, it isn't a perfect system but it feels fair enough.
This change that I mentioned at the beginning was just announced to my team today and it's as follows: Instead of tracking month to month, our credit goal will be tracked annually. We are expected to hit 100% of our goal by year-end, meaning we're expected to complete 7 hours of project work every day for every month of the calendar year. They are no longer letting us miss any months, which means that if we take time off, we are forced to make up every hour of every day.
So then this begs the question, is it even time off? If I take a day off but know that I will have to work those hours eventually (before the calendar year ends) then it's not really time off, is it? I'm just kicking the can down the road. This feels like it should be illegal, but I doubt there are any legal grounds to sue my company if they go through with this policy change. I just can't believe that they are expecting us to make up every single day we take off. It feels exploitative and unfair. I would rather have 15-20 days off a year, no questions asked, than have this “unlimited” bs.
TLDR; Company is forcing us to make up all PTO we take, meaning that PTO is really non-existent.