Paid Vacation: Is it Worth It?
Paid Vacation: Is it Worth It?
When it comes to general labor, such as retail or fast food restaurants, new employment is a dime a dozen. Place a help wanted sign in the window and by the next day you will have a list of applicants to choose from. Although it is time you have to take away from your regular duties to hire someone new, it is not too hard to find someone to fit the position you need filled. What if your company’s needs are a little more precise? While anyone can be trained to run a cash register, what if you own a business building business websites, or own an accounting firm. The skill set required for this work is less common, and you may have to give a little to take a little.
This is where benefits such as paid vacation come into play. Offering benefits will help attract potential employees with the required skillsets to get the job done. Paid vacation is one that typically attracts both younger and more experienced candidates. It can be seen as a short-term benefit, usable when the individual desires it. benefits such as medical insurance are also attractive to candidates, but are not something they typically plan on using. Paid vacation though is a more flexible benefit. Not to mention, who doesn’t like getting paid to sleep in and enjoy a pants-optional day/lounge around day?
The question though, is it worth offering paid vacation? Will the gain outweigh the price? There is no legal restrictions on paid vacation, so you have some flexibility on how it is done. Some companies offer a full 40 hour work week worth of paid vacation per year. Others only offer one or two days. The first thing that you should consider is your own financial situation. You should have extra funds placed aside either for unexpected expenses, or for employee benefits. If not, see if there is room in your typical profit margin to afford them.
Another aspect to keep in mind is that vacation days are not a common thing. An employee in your company will not be off on paid time off every single week of the year. It is actually estimated in 2013 that 169 million vacation days were forfeited. That means 463,013 years of vacation time lost in 365 days. To really put that in perspective, with 169 million vacation days, you could watch the entire Netflix library an estimated 42,000 times! That is a lot of CSI Miami reruns.
What happens when an employee doesn’t take their vacation time? This is another thing that should be considered, and luckily is also a flexible area for you to work with. Some companies will allow the employee to cash them out. Some allow their employees vacation time to roll over. Other’s simply end the employee’s vacation time and restarts the count, meaning if they had five days, and only used two, at the end of the period the remaining three would be lost and the employee would again have five vacation days. Some companies allow the vacation time to build until retirement, and pay it in either one large sum, or regular payments to the person.
Is your company capable of offering it’s employees paid vacation? Work with a payroll professional like the ones found at Vision H.R. and see how one can fit into your own payroll. Vision H.R. has highly trained individuals ready to analysis and create a payroll that works for you, with the added benefits you wish to offer to your employees. So pick up the phone today, after all, you may want to enjoy some paid time off as well.
