As a manager, would it be wrong to create secret PTO so that I can keep my star employees?
I work for a large corporation that has really inane rules about PTO (Paid Time Off). For example: We don't get a ton to start with, and if you don't use all of it, at the end of the year it goes into a vesting bank that comes back to you over 4 years. This is me explaining it without using terms HR invented like "time resource allocation". Almost no one understands how this works. The PTO system depends on your role as well as what PTO level you were able to negotiate at hiring. These levels exist like "E4" for Engineer + level 4 PTO. This level has nothing to do with compensation or anything else in the company. You can't see your PTO level and HR won't tell you, but there's a spreadsheet that HR has that dictates these levels as well as when you're able to go to a new level. They show this to us with the data redacted to explain why someone isn't able to receive more PTO. Managers can submit requests for employees to go up a level, but we can't see what they're at currently and it's at HR's discretion to approve this. It's against the rules for an employee to have a PTO level 2 more than their manager too. Other than this, I like working here and so does almost all of my team. We get interesting projects and we're able to work as a pretty independent team getting along really well IMO. But the PTO system is pushing away some of my best co-workers to other companies. I'd like to tell my employees that they're welcome to take time off and only inform me, not submit PTO. I think this will be fine since we work as a pretty siloed unit and we have a good level of open communication. Is this a bad decision, either ethically or managerially?
I work for a large corporation that has really inane rules about PTO (Paid Time Off). For example:
- We don't get a ton to start with, and if you don't use all of it, at the end of the year it goes into a vesting bank that comes back to you over 4 years. This is me explaining it without using terms HR invented like "time resource allocation". Almost no one understands how this works.
- The PTO system depends on your role as well as what PTO level you were able to negotiate at hiring. These levels exist like "E4" for Engineer + level 4 PTO. This level has nothing to do with compensation or anything else in the company. You can't see your PTO level and HR won't tell you, but there's a spreadsheet that HR has that dictates these levels as well as when you're able to go to a new level. They show this to us with the data redacted to explain why someone isn't able to receive more PTO. Managers can submit requests for employees to go up a level, but we can't see what they're at currently and it's at HR's discretion to approve this. It's against the rules for an employee to have a PTO level 2 more than their manager too.
Other than this, I like working here and so does almost all of my team. We get interesting projects and we're able to work as a pretty independent team getting along really well IMO. But the PTO system is pushing away some of my best co-workers to other companies.
I'd like to tell my employees that they're welcome to take time off and only inform me, not submit PTO. I think this will be fine since we work as a pretty siloed unit and we have a good level of open communication. Is this a bad decision, either ethically or managerially?
