Providing your employees with paid time off for holidays and vacations is a basic benefit that isn't too costly to businesses. In the end, payroll is a fixed expense every month. It is planned to spend so much money per month on salary and wages. It is rare to find a company that doesn't provide holiday and vacation pay benefits, and these companies are likely to start offering pay benefits.
Aside from paid holidays and vacations, some businesses provide their employees with time off with pay for their own personal business, a death in the family, jury duty and military reserve training.
When creating your business' time-off-with-pay program, it is important to balance the benefit with what you can afford to provide in both compensation and productivity loss, and also what your competition provides.
Paid vacations and holidays are the highlight of employee benefits. It is rare for a company to not offer these two basic items in a benefits package.
As an employer, you must know how important it is to provide paid holidays and vacations. These benefits allow your employees to relax, rest, spend time with friends and family and come back to work rejuvenated and even more productive.
How much time should I set aside for holidays and vacations for my employees?
As far as holidays, there are a number of different ones through the year, but the six major ones are:
Just about every company recognizes these holidays, but other popular holidays include: Martin Luther King Day, President's Day, Good Friday and Veteran's Day. Many companies also allow employees to take a personal holiday for their birthday.
Sick leave is another common benefit that companies offer. This refers to a paid time off due to illness. Generally, most companies provide the employee with anywhere from 4-6 days of sick leave per year.
Jury duty pay is something that can be difficult to get around due to your obligations under the law. Typically, the pay the employees receive should be equal to the difference between their regular salary and what they receive for serving on the jury.
Sabbatical is a time off with pay benefit that is usually only offered to executive-level personnel. This is a paid leave of absence where the employee is granted a longer period of time beyond their vacation to accomplish a specific objective such as continued education, fulfilling an obligation of theirs, or even to just get away from everything and come back to the office with a renewed level of enthusiasm for their position.
A robust Human Resource Management System can help you manage your employees' time off. Sage's HRMS manages all types of time-off tracking, including incident-based time off, such as jury duty, medical leave, and bereavement and assign regular leaves of absence, manage and report on leaves of absence covered by FMLA, track medical certification and recertification dates, and track FMLA time taken with the full set of features delivered with Sage HRMS.
