I can't really comment on the implementation of it not being a direct part of the team at my organization that put it in place, but from an employee perspective I can say it was received very well. I feel like it shows trust in your staff to use it the right way. We were encouraged to take 5 consecutive business days off at least once every 6 months which really promotes work life balance and "refreshing your batteries" every once in a while. From a culture and employee engagement side, I believe you'll see good results. Direct managers have approval authority for PTO, but have really encouraged their team members to use the suggested 2 weeks per year. I think that is a key part of employing a policy like this...management being on board from a workplace culture perspective. Just my .2 from an employee side. Hope it helps!

Hi Nicole. My Company implemented "discretionary PTO" this year for exempt positions. I kind of like how this is communicated vs unlimited PTO. So the communication was that the expectation is for employees to take between 2 and 4 weeks of PTO off per year. Less than 2 weeks is not enough. Over 4 weeks is possible, but just needs additional approvals. This helps create expectations for min and max, with additional available for special circumstances, such as trip of a lifetime.  From a HR administration perspective, you have to be careful about FML and have a process to apply FML and STD time off vs PTO. To address this, our leave policy was updated and one week of sick time was added for exempt employees to differentiate the two situations.