re: How can one abuse "Unlimited PTO"?

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They didn't explain what "abuse" was.

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Taking leave without notifying your superiors, those who report to and any other important internal or external stakeholder to ensure that the business model remains in tact.

We have a 71 year old employee that abuses his 20 days of PTO per year. Every year. He's slick about it. Takes off an afternoon or leaves early here and there throughout the year. Takes one vacation per year. But the rest is doctor appts, dentist appointments, funerals, various personal business items that "require" him to leave at 2PM randomly.

Mgt is too scared of confronting him about it bec of his age. If it was all added up, he for sure is taking off a total of 30+ days per year. Possibly reaching 40.

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But the rest is doctor appts, dentist appointments, funerals, various personal business items that "require" him to leave at 2PM randomly.

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sounds like every senior enlisted Marine i've ever known.

It’s most definitely for the benefit of employers under a very employee friendly-sounding name.

Along with other benefits (for the employers) it ends stepped/tenured PTO. I was getting 5 weeks automatic at my previous employer after being there 16 years. Plus usually a week rollover. All that vanished when they went to “unlimited.”

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We have a 71 year old employee that abuses his 20 days of PTO per year. Every year. He's slick about it. Takes off an afternoon or leaves early here and there throughout the year. Takes one vacation per year. But the rest is doctor appts, dentist appointments, funerals, various personal business items that "require" him to leave at 2PM randomly.

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I’m missing something. How is he abusing hisPTO? Is he exceeding his number of days? Or just spreading them out?

He gets 20 days per year. Not unlimited

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This is our first year having "unlimited PTO". The caveat is "if you abuse it, you're subject to disciplinary action".

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Standard work year is 2080 hours. I would say going below 90% of that (208 hours, or 5.2 5-day work weeks) would be cause for management to take notice, going below 85% (312 hours, or 7.8 5-day work weeks) would be getting into the abusive territory. The further below 85%, the more abusive.

Guessing I'll be in the minority on this, but we switched to unlimited PTO a couple of years ago and it's way better. The PTO that I had accrued up to that point was frozen and will be paid out if I leave. I used to hoard all of my PTO til the end of the year in case I needed it for when I got sick or the kids had to stay home from school or something. Then I'd try to take basically all of December off and end up working through it anyway because there was too much crap to do.

Now, if I need to a day or three to decompress or do something unexpected, I take it and I don't have to care. We have a similarly vague "don't abuse it" rule. My team has pretty black and white performance targets (utilization for consultants), so abuse to me would be not carrying your weight on the team and hitting your targets. That also assumes the time off is being used to goof off and not because of some serious family stuff or for an otherwise "good" reason. At that point, you're not doing your job, which is something I'll fire people for regardless of whether PTO is involved.

ETA: The reason my definition of abuse is vague is because I expect people to be adults and do their job. I don't want to have to make a bunch of rules because you're too stupid to read the room. I pay people way too much to be that braindead.